ObamaBaton - Pass it on

So Obama Baton crossed the finish line of the NYC Marathon.

It crossed with me at 3 hours 25 minutes and 15 seconds.

In fact, I held the baton the entire way through. This, as many of you know, was not the intention. The idea was to pass it on to another Barack supporter who would pass it on to another and so on until it finished the race. That way it would be a symbol of our collective support for the Democratic Presidential candidate.

But that’s not how it happened. I brought it to Staten Island. I explained to people around what it was and why I was running with it. I even did an interview with a French news station. (Let’s see if that surfaces some day down the road.) I was ready to run with friends from the NYC Chapter of the Run MS Team. (I was also running for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.) I was surrounded by a mix of Italians, Frenchmen, Brits, and Dutchmen…running Dutchmen, not flying of course. (Okay, that wasn’t funny.) We were crowded in our corral. We shuffled toe-to-heel toward the starting line. The canons shot. The race began. We all started running.

For the entire first mile, running across the Verrazano Bridge, I didn’t think about the baton. I took in the energy of fellow runners, shielded myself from the wind, and dodged discarded clothing. Then at mile two, I started to think about passing the baton on. I thought, the first person I see with an Obama t-shirt is getting this thing. I saw the selection as an honor, but I didn’t see anyone wearing home-made Obama shirts (like I had on many training runs). The people in Wave 1 were for the most part serious about their pace and serious about their gear. I was still surrounded by my MS and international friends. So I kept the baton. And I kept my eyes peeled for showy supporters.

Then around mile 5, my friend commented, you need to find someone to pawn that thing off on. That’s when I pretty much decided that I was going to keep the thing for the entire time. It had the potential to transform from being passed to being pawned. For marathon participants going this pace (sub 8-minute miles), the baton could be seen as something that got in the way of their race, their time, their PR’ing (personal record).

I say I pretty much decided because although us runners were a lot less crowded together than I expected a group of 39,000 to be, we moved closer together on bridges. I had one more mid-marathon idea to treat the baton like a fans use an inflatable ball at sporting events in the stadium. I considered thought passing it on without explanation like tag, you’re it and give it to the next guy.

But I thought better of it because everyone should know exactly what they are getting into. They should have a choice. Even though it wasn’t heavy, I worried that the first would get stuck with it and not be physically or more importantly, mentally prepared to run with a baton the entire way. When you have get water or Gatorade every mile. When you’re taking gels or jelly beans. When you’re high fiving, waving, or wiping your forehead.

I was prepared. So I carried it the whole way. And I crossed the line 20 minutes faster than my goal pace of 3:45. (I ran my first marathon at 3:47 two years prior.)

There were times I wanted to pass it, pawn it, and honestly, just toss it to the side. But I couldn’t. I had made a decision to make this blue baton a representation of our commitment to Obama. And though it was not literally shared on the course, I did feel like I was sharing it with all of you in our Facebook groups, all of you who visited this site, all of our Twitter followers, and all the Barack supporters who never found this group but have been inspired by him.

It is still, I believe, a testament to personal inspiration to action. I hope you found the idea interesting and found some inspiration in it as well. I learned that this organizing and coming together to do for the better may not come as easy as expected. It’s become less natural than it should be and perhaps needs to be a lot more planned. But I know we’ll get better. I have faith we’ll learn quickly. And moving forward, we’ll be able to do even more than we imagined together.

Thank you everyone for your support and participation. Now, if you haven’t already, go vote!

One of the catalysts for Obama Baton was a growing concern that this election would become about the little things. That is, over the final month of the race, this country would get caught up, bogged down, and sucked into the specifics. At best, I thought, we’d watch debates on small parts of policies (”$18B in earmarks” of the $438B deficit) and at worst we’d be distracted by poor word choices (”that one” from last night). And not that those details don’t matter but I worried that it would be easy to lose sight of the bigger picture:

We have one candidate that has re-energized the American people around our future. He has certainly built interest in politics, but more importantly, he has moved us to take responsibility and action.

So in a sense, this election is about the little things. But not the policy specifics or nuances of speech; rather, all the little acts and achievements of individuals and groups of people throughout the U.S.

It will be easy to trivialize this. The same way you can trivialize the artists he has inspired to make posters and t-shirts, the designers he has inspired to make websites, the citizens he has inspired to vote for the first time, the community organizers…

Yet the fact is Barack Obama has inspired me to do something just like he’s inspired many others to contribute to changing our world for the better. That’s why I am (now we are) running with a blue baton instead of empty-handed.