History of the MTC pulled from the MTC Facebook page:
"Back during the late 80's, five guys would meet in the hills of Ellerbe, NC for training runs for marathons. One Christmas during that time, one of the guys purchased 5 shirts; one for each training partner. The shirt was a navy blue shirt with "Mangum Track Club" on the front of it. As the story goes, one of the wives of one of the guys wanted one of the shirts. Well being guys, they told her, "You will have to earn it." The "Shirt Run" was born. The shirt run is a 15-mile point-to-point run/walk from Mangum, N.C. to Ellerbe, N.C. Once you finish the shirt run, you will receive your Mangum Track Club shirt and you are a member for life."
As soon as Jason told me about this club, I wanted to be a member. Why? Because it is a group of people who embrace running and the craziness it causes! I have to admit the thought of running in the middle of nowhere and receiving a shirt were also major selling points. So, I signed up for the run and joined the Facebook group. I didn't post much, as I wasn't an official member, but I did read what members were posting and realized very quickly that this club is made up of some pure out crazy people. I was slightly envious of the ones who were planning a double (30 miles) Shirt Run, but had to put the blinders on as my focus is Boston!
So, 04/01/12 rolls around and J and I are up early to make the hour and a half trek to the finish line (aka the dog pen - yes, it's an actual dog pen on the side of the road) to catch the shuttle to the start. We get there and all we see are empty cars, not a soul anywhere. Uh-oh. I am convinced they are playing an April Fool's joke on us. After standing around a few minutes and no sign of a human being, I get super antsy and tell J I have a training run to conquer and am going running. I figure we'll just run the course backwards until we meet up with other runners. One (big) problem though, we didn't know the course. We ran *every* single road in the area (except the right one). We got chased by a hunting dog and I had to protect J with a pine cone (I'm his heroine, well at least I like to think so). We freaked out a random runner by bombarding him with questions about the shirt run. To quote him, "I'm just running home." He sure did run off fast. I think he's the reason the cop car cruised by us twice. 13 miles after we started we see the church. The church we've been looking for the entire run. The church that was .2 miles from the stop sign (if you turned right) where we turned left at only 2 miles into the run. The church. We were finally on the course; okay, so we had exhausted all other course options, but we were finally on it! We were greeted with a couple startled looks since we were approaching from the wrong direction; all I could say was, "I know! Wrong direction!" We were over 13 at this point and had 2 miles to go to get back to the finish line, so we turned around and headed back in the right direction. I was happy with this run because I felt strong on the hills and didn't go crazy on the downhills, which gave me the mental boost I needed/wanted going into B-town. I was also happy with this run because J and I had fun together and the club still let me in despite our crazy course.
I'm already looking forward to running another Shirt Run, but running the official course and making it a double. Embrace the craziness!
