5K Award Ceremony

For those who may have missed the initial announcement, my wife and I hosted a virtual 5K run in support of a local charity.  St. Coletta's of Illinois provides services for intellectually and developmentally disabled adults and children so that they can unlock their greatest potential.  When the COVID-19 outbreak peaked in March, they were forced to cancel all of their fundraisers - a disastrous development for a nonprofit that relies on donations to keep their doors open.  As such, my wife and I came up with the idea of turning their planned in-person charity walk into a virtual 5K run in order to drum up awareness and donations in a world where social distancing was mandatory.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, participants had one week to run five kilometers and report their time to us.  From there, we compiled the results and handed out awards to the top three men and women to cross the digital finish line.  Furthermore, t-shirts and finisher's certificates were made available to anyone who registered for them, in order to commemorate the event.  Basically, it's your normal charity road race, except you get to run at your own time and place.

All in all, the Digital Dash 5K exceeded all of our expectations and raised.  As of this moment, we are still calculating the totals; however, I can safely say that the money brought in exceeded all expectations that were set.  For that, I need to say thank you to three of you generous members of the blogosphere.

The Lost Collector, P-Town Tom, and Peter K Steinberg all took time out of their week to put their bodies through physical strain and help St. Coletta's out.  In fact, a special shout out is deserved for Mr. Steinberg, as he very nearly won the whole darn thing.  His time of 18:34 (5:59 per mile) lead for most of the week before another runner just squeaked by at the end.  Thankfully, Peter maintained second place and still gets to stand on the digital podium.  At any rate, overall, these three are a charitable bunch!

In order to generate a little extra buzz for my first event as a race director, I dangled a super vintage baseball card as a raffle prize, eligible to be won by any blogger who signed up for the Digital Dash.  Our three heroes answered the call and now it's time to see who wins this bad boy:

That is a Type I 1936 Goudey Wide Pen Premium featuring star outfielder of the Philadelphia Phillies, Ethan Allen, giving batting tips to young baseball fan.  Mr. Allen had some speed back in his day, topping out with 21 stolen bases in a single season (1929) and finishing his 13-year career with 84 swiped bags.  I wonder how he would have done in a 5K road race back in his athletic prime?

In order to decide which of these three running bloggers gets the prize, I ran their names through the randomizer three times - three participants, three cycles seemed fair to me.  Anyway, enough stalling, let's see who gets this antique trophy:

Congratulations to The Lost Collector!  I'll try to have your prize in the mail tomorrow, definitely no longer than Friday.  Keep your eyes peeled!

As for our other two competitors, I'm still going to work up a prize package for both of you.  After all, you all made me look good in my first attempt at hosting and officiating a road race.  I've run a bunch in my life; but this was the maiden voyage as a race director.  It looks like I'm going to get the chance to do a few more thanks to charitable donors like you.

Thank you for taking time out of your lives to participate - it truly means more to me than you can possibly know.  The clients of St. Coletta's of Illinois think you are rock stars and I have to agree.