Compelling Reasons

Compelling Reasons

Two days ago—on the eve of the Peachtree Road Race I posted the following on Facebook:

If anyone can give me a really, really compelling reason why I should give you my Peachtree Road Race T-shirt, it’s yours!!

The rules:

1.     I am the sole judge of this contest.

2.     Entries must be submitted by 4:30 a.m. tomorrow morning (EST) via Facebook (Note: This is the time I would be leaving my house to run the race and I wanted to think about the entries while I ran.)

3.     Winner must provide me a mailing address (or come by my house to get the shirt…or find me at the finish line…or send a carrier pigeon to locate me (winner’s choice).

4.     I will use your winning entry in a future book I’m writing (Note: This one!).

5.     Winner must be satisfied with an XL.

So once I got back from the race yesterday I looked over the entries from what I considered to be the leading contenders.  Here they are in no particular order:

•  Alan, who submitted a photo of a gun with a dog held to its head with the caption ‘If you don’t I’ll shoot this dog.’  (Note: Most everyone who knows me knows how much I love animals, but I still found this entry funny if not for the sheer absurdity of it.)

• Ronnie, whose reason was he ‘works 96 hours a week to provide for my family and could use an awesome T-shirt (Sorry, Ronnie—I had to disqualify you for calling it an ‘awesome’ shirt.  My sister’s post on Facebook says it all: ‘Is this the shirt that gets uglier every year?’  Yes.  Yes it does, and it did so again.).

•  Jeff, who wanted the shirt ‘to prevent Gordon Cherr from running shirtless—don’t make me provide pictures!’  However, photographs of a shirtless Gordon have (easy now) ‘graced’ the pages of the Darkside Running Club newsletter on more than one occasion.  At this point it’s impossible for my eyeballs to burn any more than they already have.  No shirt for you, Jeff—you’re a little late to the party, but I do like your thinking.

•  Eric, who says he’s never run Peachtree and probably never will but wanted to wear it so someone could say to him ‘Boy it sure was wet that year’ and he would reply ‘What are you talking about?’  Eric predicated his entry on the weather forecast for race day that called for a ‘100% chance of rain.’  Guess what?  It didn’t.  Sorry, Eric: no shirt for you since your imaginary scenario could never play out.  You should know better than counting on the weather gurus being right.

• Mark, because when he runs through his neighborhood people always shout ‘Please!  Put a shirt on!  We’re trying to eat over here!’  He thinks his neighbors would appreciate him wearing a shirt.  I think his neighbors should be grateful Mark and not Gordon lives there.  Mark—you might want to make a trip to Target and pick up a little something to hide that appetite suppressant torso of yours (consider me the voice of experience).

•  Leslie, who was trying to think of something clever along the lines of ‘a wet T-shirt contest.’  Sorry Leslie—not even close (see Eric’s storyline above).

•  Francis, who ‘only got to run one Peachtree back in 1976’ when he was stationed at Fort McClellan, Alabama.  Since you ran Peachtree three years before I ran my first one, no T-shirt for you, Francis!

•  Beth, who submits that ‘I’m you’re number one fan and you’re my number one fan.’  Tough to argue with that one, Beth, but in all honesty one day you’re going to have a whole lot more T-shirts than I ever dreamed of having.  (See, I really am your number one fan!)  

•  Melissa, with the shortest, sweetest and undoubtedly oddest entry: ‘I love you.’  Moving on.

•  JoEllen, who wants to give the T-shirt to her daughter ‘whom I am making run this summer in hopes it will ‘take’ and when she is wearing it I will tell her: remember the running stories I told you about the guy I used to work with?  He’s the one who gave you that shirt.  If he can run more than 130,000 miles in his life you can run three today!’     

 Not that I needed help deciding on the most compelling reason, I had some anyway:

•  Sheryl: ‘I vote for Jo’s daughter!  You could have a hand in creating a lifelong runner!’

•  Ryan and Felicia: ‘I vote for JoEllen.   If a shirt can inspire a girl to take up the sport that is a part of our lives and possibly change hers…that is a noble and compelling reason.’

Sheryl, Ryan and Felicia—I couldn’t agree more.  Those sentiments pretty much echo what I’ve been preaching since I ran my first Peachtree Road Race way back in 1979.

Therefore, JoEllen’s daughter will be getting this year’s Peachtree Road Race T-shirt.  My challenge to her is that she stick with running and earn the Peachtree T-shirt on her own in 2014!   

I feel honored to be able to say I’ve run the Peachtree Road Race 35 consecutive times over the course of five different decades.  One day I hope to make those numbers 50 and six, respectively. 

When that day comes I just might keep the T-shirt for myself.