The Samford Stogies Racing Team has a unique story. The team is, of course, not your average running team.

The members all have a daring and adventurous spirit and this spirit is engrained in the story of the team's origin. The team's story has shaped the team with this similarly unique spirit. You cannot overlook this team's humble beginnings, because as the story goes... It all began over a cigar...

It was fall of 2004...

Josh Gates and Drew Roberts were sitting on the front porch of a house formerly known as "the shire" swapping stories over a couple of large cigars. The topic of conversation turned to marathons and a challenge was laid down. "Drew, you won't run the Birmingham Marathon!" I snapped back, "I'm not scared, are you?" Our thought process was that running is all mental, right? And so it began...

Needless to say, it didn't get too far. Before we knew it, it was the end of January and only 2 weeks before our 26.2 mile demise. Neither of us had been on a training run the whole time. I called Josh and told him it was the last day of registration. He responded, "well, let's sign up, what are you waiting for?" This caught me off guard as I had assumed we would come back to the challenge at another time. But we went running...

Samford Stogies

On mile 19 we started a two-mile uphill stretch that tested everything I had in me. I thought it would be a walk in the park on the way down the hill, but that was worse. My legs were locked and I couldn't extend them to go down. Miserable - that's the only word I can think of to describe it. It was all will-power down the last stretch. It felt like somebody cut my right achiles on mile 24, but I didn't care. You would have to kill me to stop me that close. Josh finished in 3:52 minutes and I snuck in at 3:56 minutes. We succeeded...

It was a great experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. If you want to see the results from this race, then click below. If you would like to continue reading the story from the second year of our racing team, then click next. I hope you enjoy:

A year later... I couldn't imagine running another marathon without training, but we couldn't sit back and rest on our laurels. Keeping the rugged, raw, and untrained mentality, we put together a relay team of like-minded individuals. So we enlisted the likes of Keith Ward, Patrick Crandall, and Colin Camacho. Searching for a team name, Pat recommended "Samford Stogies" because we are old Samford students, out of shape, and past our prime. It was a hit and we decided to step it up a notch and run with cigars to form our Stogie identity.

Well, deciding to run with cigars in your mouth, and doing it on race day, are two different things... But we aren't the type to back down. Who says you can't smoke your victory cigar during the fight? So we set off...

Cigars in mouth...

2004-2009
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