Canadian_Running_-_November_-_December_2016

By Colin Smith

I

f you’ve been running for more than a few years, you probably have one by now.

A shelf, a drawer, maybe a bag in the bottom of a closet full of finisher’s shirts.

They sit there neglected until you’re out of clean shirts and need to go for a run, or it’s

time to make some space and they’re finally carted off to the nearest second-hand shop.

Some luck y soul out t here is r unning around in my teal Tow nsv ille Turkey Trot Shuff le

5 k “technical ” shirt.

That’s the life of your typical souvenir race shirt in 2016.

And that’s why it’s so refreshing to see the offerings for this year’s Scotiabank

Toronto Waterfront Marathon, Half-Marathon and 5k races. The shirts – designed by

Toronto-based artist-athlete Mango Peeler (real name: Jeff Garcia) – are pleasantly free

of clichés: no CN Tower; no silhouette of a runner or pack of runners; not even a maple

leaf. You might actually wear this one out at a bar.

But that doesn’t mean the shirt doesn’t capture the spirit of stwm, one of just five

iaaf Gold Label marathons in North America. The wavy design was inspired by the

waterfront itself, where Torontonians train year-round just at the edge of the concrete

jungle that is Canada’s largest city.

Garcia’s vision for the design crystallized while running on Toronto’s Martin

Goodman Trail, which follows the Lake Ontario shoreline. “Rolling along the trail,

watching the waves crash, the repetition and ritual of grinding out kilometre after

kilometre is always hypnotic and inspiring,” Garcia says, adding: “I was also listening

to Kanye West’s “Waves” a lot during this time.”

With that idea in mind, Garcia hit the studio. He took 42 basic lines – one for every

kilometre in a marathon – printed on a piece of paper. He then passed that sheet

through a photocopier 42 times, manipulating the initial image to give it a wavy distor-

tion. Slicing through the wave pattern is a ref lective map of the stwm course.

“Initially, I wanted the whole thing to be ref lective but that would have been too

costly,” Garcia says. “ The ref lective map makes the shirt completely different at night,

paving the way for runners, keeping us visible.”

Speaking of runners being visible, few stand out in a race more than Garcia,

Finally, an “Appeeling”

Finisher’s Shirt

The Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Marathon

comissioned an artist to reinvent the race shirt

18 Canadian Running November & December 2016, Volume 9, Issue 7

Inge Johnson/Canada Running series, Mango Peeler, Mango Peeler, Man

go Peeler, Mango Peeler

off the beaten path