T-shirt Tales: How I Received My Runner's World T-shirt

Yesterday, I received an envelope with November's Runner's World and an RW t-shirt. As it happens, my subscription has lapsed, and they have been chasing me with e-mails and letters. All this for a twenty buck subscription? No worries. The Ryan Hall cover story was interesting, and I'd get to the rest next week.

My name was spelled correctly on the package. How odd, and amazing, I thought. For every subscription, I use codes so I can follow the direct mail path. Runners World is Anthony R Trendt. 'r' = runners world. For Poets & Writers Magazine, I use 'Anthony P Trendl' and so on. My real middle initial is neither, so I know who each sells my name too. (For curious minds: Poets and Writers sold mine to the most, and as a result, I get lots of mail from environmental groups.)

This morning, I grabbed the October issue with the the very cool Zola Budd profile, and realized I had only received that a week or two ago. Wow. I have November's already? Weird.

Then I remembered. It all made sense.

See the letters to the editor section for a brilliantly written comment on the Andrew Wheating profile. I thought the article neglected mentioning Jim, one of running's more consistent milers of the 1980s and 90s, and whose 1500 time in the 1984 Olympics remains the best run by an American in an Olympic final. Couldn't let this error continue. I didn't get to mention that's he's a fine coach too.

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