Is it really all about that ‘bling’?
The Little Rock Marathon’s massive finishers medals — aka “the bling” — are an enticement that brings thousands a-running.
“It’s all about the bling,” says [fill in the blank with your favorite marathoner; so many have said this it hardly makes sense to quote just one].
But if it truly were all about the bling, why bother with that messy running? Why train for months, grind down two pairs of shoes, drag yourself over lumpen sidewalks in the freezing dawn or worse, the sizzling afternoon — while courting overuse injuries from the pounding and tooth decay from the jelly beans and gels that keep you from collapsing into a quivering pile of Can-GoNo-More?
Internet entrepreneurs are standing by, ready to mail you a smaller but still fancy medal from a “virtual race.” Some of them will give you that bling for nothing more taxing than typing the numerals of a credit card.
If that is truly how you want to roll.
And some real races accept “virtual runner” registrations, which allow someone to contribute to a charity event’s beneficiary without showing up on race day.
The Little Rock Marathon is not one of those events.
“It’s about the full experience of making a goal — whether it’s a 5K or a marathon or whatever — but actually finishing and accomplishing the thrill of a race,” says Alice Stewart, a longtime racer who handles publicity for the Little Rock Parks and Recreation event.
“It’s not about the bling or making money off selling a piece of metal. It’s about creating an opportunity and an atmosphere for people to make memories, set goals, work hard and accomplish them.”
With that attitude, race directors Geneva Lamm and Gina Pharis applied in August to the National Day Calendar (nationaldaycalendar.com) to have the first Sunday in March designated “Finisher’s Medal Day.” It was accepted.
Other marathons are coordinating with Little Rock to publicize the observance. Stewart likes a quote from the director of the Marine Corps Marathon, who said, “The few. The proud. The finishers.”
But the finishers medals involved are not just from marathons. “It’s all races,” she says.
To observe the day, racers can wear their medals and post about what they mean using the hashtag #FinishersMedalDay The medal on social media.
Virtual events appeal to runners who don’t have a lot of competitive events in their area.
Will Run for Bling and Charity (willrunforbling. com) is a 5-year-old company in Atlanta whose website courts runners and walkers with limited-time distance runs, for charity. It has a website where you select one of these events and a Facebook page where you can — if you wish — report your time or post a photo.
“A virtual race is a race that can be ran at any location,” the site states. “You can walk, use the treadmill, run outside or participate in another race. You can run your race at your pace wherever you like.”
So, no travel expense, and you can do your distance across several days. You just have to say you did it.
“Events” open and close, and they do sell out. The fourth annual Puppy Love 5K/10K/Marathon was Feb. 11-18 and benefited the American Humane Association. For $25, racers received a 4-inch
glittery medal on a decorative ribbon. T-shirts were available, too, for extra.
The website says fees include a donation to charity, but the runner doesn’t get a tax benefit, and the percentage of each entry fee donated to the charity is not listed. Requests for an interview placed through the Facebook page and on the website last week remained unanswered Friday, except by an automatically generated email promising the site would be in touch.
More comprehensive is Yes.Fit (formerly Make Yes Happen), an app-based service that offers virtual events as well as a platform that organizations can use to inspire donations in the guise of entry fees (without all that costly insurance, course certification, police coverage, publicity …).
App users can start their own races, too.
The Yes.Fit app is available through the App Store and Google Play, and its 65 virtual events coordinate with 20 brands of fitness trackers, from FitBit to Yoo. It has a closed group on Facebook (16,346 members) for community support. Yes.Fit allows users to message friends.
Fees range from free to $100 or more. For instance, the 23.4-mile Lucky Leprechaun, which costs $25 and had 1,050 participants by Thursday, offers a glittery green medal on a patterned ribbon. T-shirts that read
“Irish I were logging miles” are available.
A clerk for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Conley Byrd, signed up for a $25 Race to Oz in 2015 through Yes.Fit’s progenitor, Make Yes Happen. He paid $26.22, counting fees. Unwilling to download apps, he received photos of the road he was supposedly running via email. After he submitted his result via email, he promptly received a glittery medal on a ribbon.
He also entered The Extraterrestrial Abductions Day 5K/10K through a different website, moonjoggers. com. For $17 — including a 15 percent donation to the National MS Society — he received a glow-in-the-dark medal on a decorative ribbon, after reporting he’d gone the distance.
Moon Joggers also credits biking and rollerblading toward mileage. And Moon Joggers is having a “clearance sale” of unsold medals from past events.
Byrd says he likes the medals, especially the abductions one, but likens the experience to paying for a solo workout. He missed the camaraderie of actual comrades, and especially the surge of energy he feels approaching a finish line when someone’s ahead of him.
But he might enter another virtual event with his little girl, because having the prospect of a medal to commemorate time shared appeals to him.