Fair vs. Right

I’ve spent way too much time over the past couple of days thinking about fair vs. right.  I keep oscillating over what to do, but before I jump to where I stand today, let me start from the start.

To me, fair is pretty straightforward; it is what is allowed by the rules.  Fair is the opposite of cheating.  What is right isn’t quite as easy to define.  Perhaps that is because it could be different for different people.  Clearly, to me at least, the two are not synonymous.

Here is a football scenario to demonstrate my point.  You are losing 30-0, the opposing team has the ball with 30 seconds left, and there is no chance you can get the ball back (let alone change the outcome of the game).  The rules say if you have a timeout left you can use it.  That would be fair.  However you aren’t going to change anything except how long the game lasts, so is it the right thing to do?  A lot of football fans would say no, let the time expire and lose gracefully.

I don’t play football though, I’m a triathlete, and my dilemma is as follows.  I want to qualify for and race in the National Championships this year.  I can qualify at any of a number of races, based on how well I do.  For simplicity sake, let’s assume that I have only to finish in the top 10% in my age group (not true at all, but suffices for discussion purposes since the actual rules are fairly complicated).

My issue stems from the fact that it appears, historically speaking, that some races are much less competitive than others.  One race in particular is so un-competitive that any of my times from last year would have qualified me, and I almost would have qualified with my very first Olympic distance race.  In contrast, there are races where it would take a time almost 20% faster to qualify.

So, do I race in OK where I am all but guaranteed to qualify, or do I race a more competitive race in Austin, and risk not qualifying?  Either race would be fair, but is it the right thing to do to race in OK?

Sadly I don’t have an answer, yet.  I do know that I would appreciate it more if I qualified in Austin.  As soon as I convince myself that Austin is the right thing to do, I wonder how I will feel if I don’t qualify and much slower people in OK do.

I suspect it will come down to whether it is more important for me to race at Nationals (by any means possible), or to qualify (against the best).  Stay tuned for my decision…