And the Winner of the First Annual Earn Your Donuts Bad Race Photo Contest Is...

I know all of my 28 readers have been anxiously awaiting this announcement, so I apologize to them and especially to the two contestants, for the delay.

Danny, who blogs at "Math on the Run" sent us this entry:

XLMIC who blogs at "Taking it On", shared this entry:

The voters have spoken, and our winner is Danny!  I'd make a joke here about my low voter turnout, but I don't want to detract from the seriousness of this contest.

Thank you both for entering! Danny wins a $35 Road ID gift certificate and XLMIC wins a $15 Dunkin Donuts gift card.  I'll be contacting you about how to send your prizes.

I am also very appreciative of the support of RoadID and Inside PR, who contributed the first-place prize.

Thanks also to everyone that read these posts and voted.  I'll probably do this again next year.  It was fun for me, and hopefully others enjoyed it as well.  Maybe I can get more participants with prize winners to vouch that I didn't sell their e-mail to spammers or send them a box of cats or something like that.  I know that I've already got some new bad race photos of my own that it will give me a chance to share.

OMG!!! TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!! PANIC!!!! (Bad Race Photo Contest)

So, soon I won't have to pimp it in every single blog post, because the First (and let's face it, Last) Annual Earn Your Donuts Bad Race Photo Contest (Brought to You by Road ID, who are probably very disappointed in me) is coming to an end tomorrow (Monday) night at 11:59PM.

So if you were planning to enter -- and I'm sure you were! -- you better get a move on. Your opportunity to win a $35 Road ID gift certificate is running out.

Details here:
http://earnyourdonuts.blogspot.com/2012/02/first-annual-earn-your-donuts-bad-race.html

Thanks very much to both our entrants so far for playing along, and particularly to Danny for the link on his blog, The Quest for Running Perfection.

I went on a long run yesterday and have my second training session this afternoon, so maybe I'll put up a real post later. Maybe.

(I thought this contest was a good idea.
Just like I thought that carrying an
imaginary dachshund while I ran was a good idea.)

The First Annual Earn Your Donuts Bad Race Photo Contest

I think race photos capture us at some of our best moments; when we're out there giving the best effort we can at something we (hopefully!) enjoy, no matter the level of competition. Better still are the ones taken at the end of the race, when we've stopped moving and the medals are around our necks.

Pictures taken during the race, well, I think they tend to sometimes come out a bit weird. Hopefully anyone who's been in a race has some photos of them running that they really like, but chances are that they've also got some like this:

(I didn't puke, I just looked like it.)

Since it's an action shot, the photographer (in the case above, my wife) is invariably going to catch me in mid-stride with my eyes closed, some other goofy expression on my face, or sometimes just looking like I'm going to die.

(Apparently, I always cross the finish line with my eyes closed?)

(Nevermind the weird facial expression.
What am I doing with my hands? Juggling?
Holding an invisible fruit basket?)

At least this one is pretty good -- I am so fast that I appear blurry!


These were the funniest ones I could find. There were probably worse ones, taken at the Baltimore Running Festival in 2010, the 2010 Philly Half, and Broad Street, but I didn't buy the photos from those races because the majority of them were strange looking or because I was behind people taller than me (which is everyone).

Then I got the pictures from the 2011 Philly Marathon. It was not my best race by any means, but the pictures generally came out ok. When I saw a photographer, I tried to make sure I was making a normal expression and not a grimace of pain. But I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing here:

(I guess I decided to zombie walk across the finish? "Brains...brains...brains!!")

At any rate, I know I can't be the only one this happens to -- in fact, I know I'm not! Adam at the "The Boring Runner" chronicled his Rock & Roll Arizona Marathon by noting how the pictures chronologically got a little more...awkward as he progressed through the race. (If you're not subscribed to his blog, you should be!)

Speed doesn't matter...if you get your picture taken while running, some of them are going to come out funny! Readers, I suspect you have some great race photos, but you probably have some bad ones, too, and I'd like you to share them in the First Annual Earn Your Donuts Bad Race Photo Contest.

This isn't just a chance to make fun of yourself for your own and other people's amusement, this is a chance to win fabulous prizes!

First prize is a $35 online gift certificate for Road ID, more than enough to buy any of the Road ID product models. I'm not one to lecture people about their choice of gear, but I'm going to lecture you now...this is an important! Bad things can happen out there, and a Road ID or similar piece of gear can help first responders quickly identify you and get in touch with your emergency contacts. There's similar products out there, but I can personally vouch for the quality of the Road ID Wrist ID Sport! If you've already got one for yourself, they make great gifts! If you're a fan of them on Facebook, have seen their advertisements, or have ordered products from them, it seems like a company with a good sense of humor and they very generously agreed to sponsor this contest.

(Wrist ID Sport photo from www.roadid.com)

Second prize is a $10.00 gift card to Dunkin Donuts. This is primarily a donut blog, after all.

So, let the First Annual Earn Your Donuts Bad Race Photo Contest (Brought to you by Road ID) begin! I look forward to your participation!

Rules
1. To enter, please send me the photo of yourself that you'd like to enter by Monday, Feb 27. That's two weeks to scour your hard drives. You can e-mail the photo or a link to it to me at earnyourdonuts@gmail.com, or you can post a link to it in the comments. Your photo will be posted on the blog, but no one's full name will be used (I'll use your first name only, your blogger nickname if you have one, or something else that you specify.)

2. It has to be a photo of yourself!

3. It doesn't matter if it's a professional photo or not, as long as it's during a race.

4. This is all in good fun. I think that everyone that's had race photos taken has probably been caught in a goofy pose. We're making fun of that and in doing so poking fun at ourselves, NOT commenting negatively on peoples' appearances. Any comments that I think are mean-spirited are going to get deleted faster than Usain Bolt runs 200m.

5. After 2/27, I will post all entrants and voting will take place either through blog comments or an online survey. (I reserve the right to choose or one or the other voting based on number of entries and how much free time I have!)

6. Make sure I have a way to contact you through your blog or e-mail. You wouldn't want to miss out on prizes! I won't spam you, I promise!

7. Update -- If you want to send in a good race photo with your bad one for comparison, as suggested in the comments, you're welcome to do so and I will post them together. You don't have to, though. For example, I think "zombie walk" and "invisible fruit basket" stand pretty well by themselves.

Safety First! (And Second!)

I've accumulated a lot of running gear over the past 5 years. One of my favorite and potentially one of the most important pieces was one that I hoped I'd never really need, the RoadID ("Wrist ID Sport" model to be exact) that Chris bought me last Christmas.

RoadID, and may similar products, keep your identification, emergency contact info, and brief medical information if necessary, available to EMTs should something happen to you while you're on the run. Potentially life saving, but also convenient; my Wrist ID Sport has kept me from feeling the need to carry my drivers' license with me on my runs, which meant my license stayed in my wallet rather than forgotten in my hydration belt while I drove around without a license for days. And it looked cool, too.

Well, as you may have gathered from all the past tense, I lost it. When I didn't find it for over a month, I started to worry that either it had fallen out of my car as I de-geared after a long run or that I had accidentally thrown it out with empty sports beans packets, or lost it in some other stupid fashion. I held off of ordering a new one though, still assuming that it was somewhere in the house or car and that it would turn up.

Two weeks ago, I ran in the Philadelphia Marathon, in which two people tragically passed away. One was a college student who collapsed just after finishing the half, and another was a 40 year-old multiple Ironman finisher who fell within sight of the finish line. For both, the cause of death was listed as a heart attack, and both would have had emergency contact and ID info on their race bibs. But while ID likely wouldn't have made a difference in these cases, it made me think about how stupid it was to be out there on the roads without taking this small but easy and potentially important precaution -- disaster really can strike at any time.

So, I broke down and ordered myself a new RoadID on Monday. I liked the old one, so I got the same model.

Today, while getting ready for my run, I found this:

This afternoon, this arrived in the mail:


Well, at least if my body is somehow bisected vertically in some bizarre marathon accident, authorities will be able to identify either half.