The Story of GimpyRunning

For those of you who don’t know, GimpyRunning is the name of the tattoo I have on my back, between my shoulder blades. Here is a picture of it in case you’ve been lucky enough not to have had the pleasure of seeing me with my shirt off. :-)

Before I get too far into this whole blog thing, I thought I would share with you where that name, design and state-of-mind came from.

GimpyRunning was born out of two things: running (obviously) and the fact that I’m always gimping around. For those that have known me for a long time, they’ll tell you when I was growing up and through my 20s, I always managed to injure myself or get dinged-up doing the simplest of tasks that often never warrant getting hurt (kicking a football on a tennis court, for example). But, because I’m so *ahem* talented, I managed to end up bruised and battered from just about any activity I did. [The back story here is that most of it was a product of my Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) being so bad at the time. It seemed that whenever I would do anything active – softball, football, golf, etc – my RA would flare up enough to make walking uncomfortable. Hence the hobbling around – or a better word would be gimping around.]

It was during a time when my RA was at its worse that I was first referred to as Gimpy. It was when I was coaching at Van Meter High School. I was the assistant Varsity boys basketball coach and head JV basketball coach. One of the conditioning drills we would run during practices was good old line drills. You know the ones where you would start at the baseline line, run to and touch the free throw line, run back and touch the baseline, then run to the half court line, touch it and run back to the baseline. And so on. To up the ante for the kids (as well as to keep them motivated during practices) the head coach and I had a deal with them: because I was young and “in shape”, I would run the line drills with them and as soon as any of the players beat me, then practice would be over with (this drill was always at the end of practice, naturally, so I was fresh and they were tired from a full practice). So night-in and night-out we’d usually run 4 – 6 full-court line drills before one of them would beat me. It was after one practice when we were all heading out of the gym to our cars when one of the kids saw me gimping my way along and asked me why I was gimpy. I explained to him my situation with RA and the affects it had on my body. Several of the other players overheard our conversation and starting referring to me as Coach Gimpy. From there, the nickname stuck.

It wasn’t until a few years after that when I really got into running**. One night I was reminiscing with friends about that period in my life and how I would compete against the kids in line drills, but would always end up gimpy that evening or the next day. At that same time, I had started to kick around the idea of forming my own running group and was looking for a catchy name to call it. After thinking about how beautifully ironic the two names sounded together, I came up with GimpyRunning. And I thought every good running club needs a good logo, right? So I came up with the design of a free spirited stick man, with his crazy, dreadlock hair bouncing around from running. Granted my running club isn’t off the ground yet, but I’ve associated the GimpyRunning design into every aspect of my running life. One of those aspects is in the form of a tattoo on my back. To me, GimpyRunning is my way to mentally and visually symbolizing fun and happiness in its purest form. That tattoo serves as a permanent reminder that life is about enjoying the little things; the simple things that bring joy to your heart and soul. That is what running does for me. It’s my escape. It’s my stress relief mechanism. It’s how I stay in shape. It’s what I do to relax. It’s what keeps me young.

Today you’ll hear me refer to GimpyRunning as my alter ego. I proudly wear the logo as a moniker for all my training and race events. It has become my own little version of a “bat symbol” that I want everyone to associate me with. So when you see the GimpyRunning logo on clothing, pictures or overhear people talking about it at the water cooler, you can say, “hey, I know that guy”. OK, so my little clothing and marketing empire isn’t off the ground yet either, but hopefully it will be soon…

** One thing to note here is that the more I got into running, the further into remission my RA went. So ever since I started running and working out 7 years ago, my RA has been in remission. How’s that for sweet irony?