All I Want For Christmas Is.....A Kenyan Runner!!

If you perform a search of the interweb for gifts for runners, you will be amazed at how many websites give their "Top 10 Creative Gifts For Runners." If you spend enough time parsing through the results, you'll no doubt realize that every one of these lists are essentially the same thing. They all include iPods (or MP3 players at least), gym or running club memberships, running gear and the like. I must admit that I, too, was about to write my top 10 gift ideas but stopped short, realizing that my list was essentially the same (though written much more hilariously). I took a step back and thought about why even I, a handsome, witty and creative runner, couldn't come up with an original list of gifts for runners. I finally realized that making this type of list is really an exercise of futility. The reason for this can be found by the meaning of the simple idiom "To each his own." How can you make a list of gifts for runners when it is the runners themselves who have their own preferences. Rather than have somebody buy me some running clothes that I don't particularly like, I would rather just go get them myself. The same can be said of each item on all these lists. Having reached this universal truth, I was about to shut off my computer and spend some QT (quality time) with my dopeness wife CVSW, when I came across an article in the New York Times that instantly turned that QT into BT (blogging time!).

This article gave me new meaning to creative running gifts. As you can read in the article, for his 40th birthday present, running enthusiast Michael Chambers' wife got him a world-class runner from Kenya for a day! Paying $400, Tina Chambers, through New York Road Runners, hired veteran road racer Richard Kiplagat to run with her husband and then have lunch with his family. Words do little justice to how cool I think this gift was. A truly unique, relatively cheap gift the memory of which would assumedly last a lifetime.

Chambers and Kiplagat ran eight miles together, but their time together shall remain with Chambers for many miles to come. Assuming Kiplagat speaks English, I wonder if they talked whilst running? Knowing myself, I bet if I had been given this present, I would still have listened to my awesome techno music instead of speaking to Kiplagat about his running career.

With this post complete, the digital ink still drying and in the spirit of giving, I have decided that if any of you readers out there have dreamed of the opportunity to run with me, your dream can come true.....for only $250!