Who Rocked The LetsRun.com Rio Prediction Contest? A State Champion High School Coach, A Dude on His Honeymoon – The Talented Winners Span From All Over The Globe

by LetsRun.com
September 30, 2106

Well, it’s almost October so clearly the 2016 Rio Olympics and 2016 track season are in the books and all of the winners have received their praise, except for the winners of the LetsRun.com Running Warehouse Rio Prediction Contest.

The winners always remind us of the great and interesting people who make up LetsRun.com as they are so many cool stories associated with our winners. In the past, we’ve had USATF champions, rocket scientists, 8th grade soccer players, and a whole lot of other interesting people come out on top.

This year is no different.


Running Warehouse usually has a shoe company as a joint partner in the LetsRun.com Prediction Contests, but because of IOC Rule 40, they wanted to highlight AthleteBiz instead.Screenshot 2016-08-08 at 14.58.04

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AthleteBiz empowers our sport’s top athletes to be as successful “off the track” as they are as athletically. Fans get to enjoy “up close and personal” profiles, compelling blogs and creative ways to access and support their favorite athletes. You can also buy shoes from athlete’s pages on AthleteBiz with a percentage of the proceeds going directly to the athlete. Click here to check it out.


Remember There is One Place That Stands Out to Buy Your Shoes Online RunningWarehouse.com Remember There is One Place That Stands Out to Buy Your Shoes Online RunningWarehouse.com

Nebraska State Champion Coach is Our Winner

The winner of our contest is 32-year-old Colin Johnston. Colin is quite modest. He wrote, “I am a PE teacher and cross country and track & field coach at Millard West High School in Omaha, NE. I ran track and cross country through high school and college and have followed the sport closely since I started running, from high school and college athletes/teams to professional athletes. Letsrun is a daily stop for me and has been for probably the last 15 years.” What Colin didn’t tell us is that Millard West won the state championship in Nebraska in boys XC (where he is the head coach) and track (where he is the co head-coach). Pretty impressive. Colin wins a $300 gift certificate from Running Warehouse.

Our Runner-Up Won Silver While Getting Married And Going On His Honeymoon

28-year-old Patrick Morris from Ferndale, Michigan, was the runner-up behind Colin. Patrick has a pretty cool story. He got married on August 6th, the day after the opening ceremonies. As a result of the wedding, he had to do his picks “last minute and all in one go.” He then went on his honeymoon to Peru where he was able to watch the Olympics and see he was doing pretty well in the contest. He wrote:

“I checked the contest scoring page a few times on the trip and told her (my wife) that I happened to be winning. After that, we had a great time watching the running events (my wife is a runner as well) and checking the scores. We visited Machu Picchu on a day trip, then came back to our hotel to watch Olympics in the evening! We got back to Michigan on Saturday, August 20, so I was able to watch the men’s marathon the next morning, and see Eliud win and Galen finish third. I told my wife that if I won anything, I’d get her a new pair of shoes with the gift certificate, so we’ll each have a new pair for fall running.”

Patrick won a $200 gift certificate from Running Warehouse so he should definitely be able to buy his wife a new pair of running shoes. We’re currently negotiating with Patrick to hire him as our new relationship expert so don’t be surprised if you see posts from Patrick on the forum soon.

$100 Winners

Third through fifth place in our contest all won $100 gift certificates from Running Warehouse.

Since the contest was based on the Olympics, third-place deserves extra bragging rights. Our bronze medallist was “Laura from England.” Since Running Warehouse does not ship to England (there is a RunningWarehouse.Eu that ships to mainland Europe), Laura offered to give her gift certificate to an unnamed poster from the US on the LetsRun.com forums whose posts she likes. We appreciate the gesture, but will PayPal her $100 cash.

Bill Stewart, a 50-year-old from Atlanta, Georgia, who works in marketing and financial analysis for the InterContinental Hotels Group, finished fourth. Bill also is volunteer coach at Walton High School in Marietta, Ga., in XC and track.

Bill’s got a ton of connections in our sport and even to LetsRun.com. He ran in college at UMass-Amherst. He ran a half-marathon PR of 1:06:00 at the Philly Half Marathon in he thinks 2001 and our very own Rojo was in his group. Bill started helping out at Walton as a coach because of his friend Pete Rea, who was a teacher there at the time and was just about to leave to work with ZAP Fitness. Bill also coached 3 women who qualified for the 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials. He says of our great sport, “Running has given me great friendships all around the world and for that I am most grateful. (I) read LetsRun probably too often but appreciate all the good work you do.”

32-year-old Pierre Landry of Toronto finished 5th in our contest. He’s a geologist for a mining company and spends most of his work time “creating 3D models and estimating the amount of metal contained in the ground.” His dad was a pretty successful high school coach who introduced him to the sport. The rest is history. Pierre wrote:

“When I was in high school I stared going on the LetsRun forums and was happy to find out that there were seemingly so many people that were just as passionate about Ritz breaking 14min at the Penn Relays as I was. I’ve always been more of a fan than an athlete. I was an average 800m runner in high school and I continued to be an average runner at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario). I ran all four years of university and got bumped up to the varsity squad in the last two weeks of my senior year after three guys on our 4x400m team went down with injuries during our OUA conference championship. The 4×400 was the last event of the meet so I got to run. Those guys were still injured a week later so I got to run again the following week at the CIS national championship meet. So in typical Letsrun fashion, my dreams became reality. I don’t run so much anymore because of work and family commitments but I still follow the sport closely.”

Congratulations to all of our winners and to everyone who played in our contest. Thanks to RunningWarehouse.com for sponsoring our contest and all of our contests this year. They are the leader in online running retail for a reason.

If you played in the contest and want to check your scores, use the form below. If you want to see the top 30 leaderboard, click here.

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