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In the closet

There’s this little problem I have with the Boston Marathon. It’s those jackets.

Every year, Adidas dumps a few thousand jackets in the Boston area, via the B.A.A. The most common are volunteer jackets, usually in a fairly vivid color (this year, they’re blue, as is the volunteer jacket I have from 1996, but bright yellow and orange have happened.) The volunteer jackets are why the B.A.A. is never short on volunteers for this race. There are also media jackets (usually black) and the relatively rare medical staff jackets (red this year) and B.A.A. employee jackets (grey this year.) And there’s always a slightly different pattern available for sale to the runners.

This was my eleventh year in Boston, and my ninth in some sort of jacket-qualified position. (I ran, or tried to, in ‘00, and in ‘95 I was just a spectator.) I’ve had a few in my closet. I still have my volunteer jacket from ‘96 (my first) and my media jacket from ‘01, which is quite usefully heavy and also represented my last year with RW. And I have other, similar jackets from other contexts. In other words, I don’t need any more jackets, no matter how nice they may be.

I’ve given a few away. One, once, to a cousin who housed us in Cambridge the year I didn’t have an employer who booked hotel rooms. Others to anyone who would take them. I’ve tried to give one to my father, but as a runner himself he doesn’t want to wear the implied message, (“I ran the marathon,”) when he didn’t. Some years I’ve simply turned the jacket down at the source and let the B.A.A. worry about the extras, but I’ve realized since then that having it and wearing it on race day, particularly in a team-centered effort like mine, has a psychological effect, not just on myself but on the other jacketed volunteers I work with.

So I took this year’s jacket, and now I don’t know what to do with it. Selling it, by whatever means, would feel Just Wrong. I need to find someone who would appreciate it as a gift, but not take it so seriously that they’d prefer to earn their own. Unfortunately, my nieces are too small.

Now Playing: Bent Out Of Shape from All Shook Down by The Replacements

Posted by pjm on April 21, 2005 3:26 PM |

Comments

I love this entry. How big is the jacket? Could you give it to one of the kids you or A knows that runs? Maybe as a gift to the most improved or most inspirational or most hard core, etc? I feel like a younger runner might like it-and since they don’t run marathons yet might not have an aversion to wearing it.

Posted by: Audrey | April 21, 2005 3:47 PM

My mom has this box of stuff that she gives out to her students when they do something good—little trinkets and stickers and coffee mugs she got at the bank and everything. I’ve given her a number of unused race t-shirts over the years, and I think my 2005 Boston Marathon media jacket will be quite a hot commodity.

Posted by: samo | April 21, 2005 5:02 PM

Yeah, you could just pick your favorite girl on the XC team and give it to her. But who’s your favorite? (And it would be huge on any of them…) Or maybe you should just pick the biggest young male runner you know.

Posted by: Alison | April 21, 2005 5:25 PM

Heh, Heh…I’d take one off your hands. I qualified and ran boston twice so I certainly feel as though I’ve earned it. BUT - here in Dallas - it just is not going to get much use. In other words, it would just move from your closet to mine. :-) So, sadly, I don’t think that’s an ideal solution.

Next year make a point to find some hard case runners who would love to have bought a jackets but could not afford them. Then make their day.

Posted by: Chris | April 21, 2005 8:13 PM

ME! ME! ME! Give it to ME!

:)

Oh, that sounded all greedy, didn’t it?!

How’s this: when you and A. move to Boston, I’ll have you both over for dinner in exchange. And I’ll make cookies. Lots of cookies!

Or maybe I should just volunteer next year and get my own?

Posted by: Miss Injury | April 22, 2005 9:31 AM

So, 2 1/2 yrs after this post of yours, I’d take a volunteer jacket off your hands. Was just googling “Boston Marathon Volunteer Jacket” to find one I could buy for a marathoner friend of mine who lusts after my neon orange volunteer jacket from back in the day when I was a grad student in Boston. I keep telling her she should just take it, have it, but her eyes get big and wide and she says, “Oh, no, I could NEVER do that.” The sacred nature of the Boston, and whatnot. In addition to not taking mine, she’d never wear an official runner’s jacket either, never having run it. But she’d love a Boston Marathon media jacket, medic jacket, volunteer jacket, anything along those lines. Ebay is surprisingly unhelpful. So there’s you, 2 1/2 yrs ago, with your funny post. Got any pesky jackets lying around you’d be willing to sell?

Posted by: Mary Freeman | October 31, 2007 4:04 PM

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