Toe Painting Anyone???

While I’ve got my work cut out for me on the training front, there are a host of other facets to this adventure…and reaching my fund raising goal is one of those.  Like I said way back in this blog, I set a steep goal in hopes it would spur the creative juices.  What I didn’t consider was that I only have so much time and as many hours as I am spending out there on the road, bandwidth for anything else is rather narrow.

The road time does provide ample time for contemplation, however, and I came up with an idea to try and drive donations during my eight miler this afternoon.  I confess it is schmaltzy, but figure there’s little downside --- if a single person takes me up on this gimmick it is more dollars to fight diabetes.

 Below is a picture of the readout from today’s run, compliments of the download from my Garmin Sports Watch:

The “Neighborhood” canvas

This is my neighborhood, which is spread through a golf course and all those roads traced by the bold red line are all of the “low traffic” options I have for running.  Even though this doesn’t look like anything (except perhaps an extra-long spaghetti noodle?), the thought occurred to me that I could plot my runs to try and render a drawing of something.  The notion probably popped up because I will be running anywhere from 22-26 miles every Saturday until the fifty miler in July…and those distances permit drawing a rather long line!

Below are two more potential “canvases” --- the first displays the neighborhood where I run in Dayton when I make my monthly trip back to the home office. 

The “Ohio” canvas, the general area I run when I travel to HQ every month…what could you make with that circle in the upper left???

And even though you can’t really see the roads too well because I panned back to point out the screen includes distance and pace (this run was 16.3 miles at an 8:58 pace…if you can make it out), wanted to show roadways along the direction I usually head for runs greater than10 miles.

The “Carolina Beach” canvas – this was a 16-mile run down to Carolina Beach State Park.  If I cut out the little jog at the top it could be a golf club after you flubbed that chip shot!

The last canvas displays the area north of my neighborhood with the route I follow for my ten mile run.  This is in basically to show there are a lot of roads and when I start running twice as far there’s plenty of canvas…

The “Monkey Junction” canvas – the name of my neighborhood and areas north…lots of potential!

So here’s the deal.  In return for a donation I will try to trace your requested image by running it out and e-mail you the resulting screen shot.  If you pledge enough I’ll entertain distance requirements (e.g., 26 miles for your “marathon rendering”) and perhaps a minimum pace (you might have to pony up serious bucks, if you want me to run fast, though!).  What do you think?  Yeah, a bit cheesy, but this could be the start of a whole new medium à TOE PAINTING.  I suspect it will be every bit as attractive as finger painting and is interactive since you need to specify what you want rendered by my toes.  Let's not forget that your ownership of one of the earliest works in this new medium could reap impressive yields once this catches fire, lol.  Even if that dream doesn’t materialize, rest assured there will be a splendid return on investment from the benefits your donation reaps for diabetic research!

If you'd like me to take a stab at something, please leave a comment or e-mail me at vances@ec.rr.com.