Peachtree Road Race founder reflects on T-shirt inspiration

ATLANTA - Tim Singleton had a brilliant idea while running in his first Boston Marathon in 1971. <br> <br> He noticed that practically every runner proudly wore a commemorative marathon T-shirt. <br> <br> He took the idea back to Atlanta, and the coveted Peachtree Road Race T-shirt was born. In 1971, when the race was only a year old, 330 people ran and received the race&#39;s first shirt. <br> <br> On Friday, an estimated 55,000 runners will participate in the 34th Peachtree Road Race, the world&#39;s largest 10-kilometer race. For most runners, the T-shirt is still the reason to run. <br> <br> But the scene Friday will be considerably different from the first race in 1970 when only 110 runners braved the heat and traffic. After each runner put $2 in a cigar box on top of Singleton&#39;s Volkswagen Microbus, Singleton said, ``Y&#39;all be careful, and watch out for traffic.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> Now the road race is a highly polished affair, with corporate sponsors, hundreds of volunteers and a prize purse of more than $79,500, the most for a non-marathon event. <br> <br> The T-shirt goes to all who finish the 6.2-mile race. Another 150,000 people are estimated to watch the race, which stretches from Peachtree Road at Lenox Square mall to Piedmont Park on 10th Street. <br> <br> Singleton, 66, a former Georgia Tech sprinter, hurdler and football player, resigned as the race director in 1975. He now teaches at North Georgia College in Dahlonega, where he lives. <br> <br> ``Tim has this amazing entrepreneurial vision,&#39;&#39; said Julia Emmons, executive director of the Atlanta Track Club, which hosts the race. ``But the whole mystique of the T-shirt was quite by accident. He started handing them out in 1971, after he ran Boston, and each year we kept running out of them. The more we ran out, the more people wanted them.&#39;&#39;