Run to Win

There were 6 official entries in my first Twitter Running Story Contest. The rules were simple: Post a link to a Twitter page that told a story about running or walking in exactly 140 characters.

Here are the official entries in the order in which they were received:
(Click here to continue reading…)

The contest to win a free copy of my book ends on Friday at 6:00 EDT. That is also the deadline for the parent contest over at Copyblogger. The prizes over there have expanded quite a bit, so be sure to submit your story to both places. First prize has been bumped up to an 8GB iPod, with the 4GB iPod moving to second place and 50 custom postcards appearing in 3^rd place (amongst other prizes.)

So get creative, write a story in exactly 140 characters, and then click here to link to your story so that you can be entered into the contest! There are 6 submissions so far, so you have a good chance of winning a copy of my book. If you don’t enter, though, you will not have any chance to win.

If you were allotted 140 characters, including punctuation and spaces, could you tell an interesting story?

That’s the challenge that was thrown down by Brian Clark at CopyBlogger, a website devoted to improving your writing.

Can you tell a story in exactly 140 characters?

That’s the idea behind the first ever @copyblogger Twitter writing contest.

It should be a great exercise and a lot of fun. Being constrained to exactly 140 characters will spark your creative juices and force you to focus stringently on word choice, sentence structure, and even punctuation.

The rules for his contest are simple. You need to use Twitter to write your story, it must be exactly 140 characters long, and it must be interesting. The best story wins a 4 GB iPod Nano. Not only that, but I’m going to sweeten the deal by offering a digital copy of my book to the best running related story!

In order to be eligible for a copy of my book about Marathon Preparation and Recovery, your story must have something to do with running or walking. It can be related to a race, to training, to walking on a nature trail, or even to watching somebody else run or walk. You must also leave a link to your Twitter story in the comments below. If you want to be eligible for the iPod, you should also leave a link in the comments over at CopyBlogger, of course. There is only 1 entry per person allowed, so make it a good one. That being said, you don’t need to enter the same story into his contest and into mine, since mine has a content restraint.

Here is an example (and my entry into Brian’s contest):
http://twitter.com/BlaineMoore/statuses/815241805

I passed 1st place at mile 19. I mustn’t let anyone catch me. I am getting so tired. There’s the finish line! The course record is now mine.

By the way, if you sign up to Twitter and want to follow me, you can do so at http://twitter.com/BlaineMoore.

(New to Twitter and not sure what to do or how to use it? Click here for some simple, step by step directions.)

So start getting creative, writing your 140 character stories, and leaving a link here so that I can read them all! The deadline is this Friday, May 23^rd, 2008 at 6:00 EDT.