NEWTON RUNNING SPELLIT CHALLENGE - THE FINAL WEEK

Time sure flies when you have fun!  A few weeks ago Newton Running started accepting entries for its route art / GPS art contest, http://www.newtonrunning.com/feel-newton/run-feel-spell-challenge.  I did not win anything until the third week, then again the fourth week, and one more during the fifth week.  Unfortunately, it was "Always the bridesmaid, not the bride".  The semi-final weekly prize package, consisting of visor, water bottle, and socks is nice but of course the combo of a Timex GPS watch and a pair of running shoes is way better.  Infinitely better would be the Grand Prize of Newton Shoes For Life!

The weekly contest ended at end-of-day on Tuesdays and I got notified on Thursdays via Twitter.  (In the beginning, I posted to Instagram but I started to hate its square requirement.  My route art usually spreads out horizontally, in order for the whole thing to be seen in Instagram I would have to shrink it to fit into the square frame, very annoying.)  The three winning entries are "relaxed", "reflective" (or rather the mirror image of that), and "tough", shown below.

I made "complete" this past Monday, plenty of time to make the Tuesday EOD deadline.  Supposedly between Wednesday the 29th of April and Friday the first of May the public gets to vote on the Grand Prize winner.  However, I haven't seen any announcement in Twitter yet.  (Don't ask me about searching for info on Instagram from a desk computer!  I can't stand Instagram!)  No winners announced this week, no link for the public to vote on the three Finalists.  I suppose the contest judges have day jobs to attend to.  It cannot hurt to have a little hope that maybe judging is not done yet, for Week #6, and that my "complete" art will finally be selected as a Weekly Finalist.  Maybe the public voting phase is already extended and that I will be selected among the three Finalists.  There's nothing to do but wait and see.

I opened the floodgate on creativity for this word, virtually trespassing private properties with my nifty pause-unpause technique to make letters like X.  I could have made "a" differently but I chose to flex my creative muscle.

Despite the narrow "f", I still like this route the most.  Mirror image, how about that?!  The first time I tried to write this I only had time to spell "lective".  I also cut corners and made some letters shorter so the whole word didn't look nice.  I tried again the next day and the result is much better.

I made good use of the locale's physical features, the "h" sticking above the other letters into what was once the mainland, from Coney Island's perspective.  My tweet said that "running makes me feel tough".  Coincidentally, the neighborhood I ran in was tough-looking, with metal bars on windows in most of the houses.

Running does make me feel complete.  I would feel even more complete if I win shoes for life.  BTW, I find that when it comes to legible GPS art, serifs are your friends.