Tanner McCord
Staff Writer
Video by: Cassidy Pickrell
KCBY-TV Staff
When hearing the words “Spare Ribs,” one’s thoughts may wonder to daydreams of delicious barbeque and a nice summer cookout, and after eating said spare ribs, the last thing you will want to do is go for a run.
Well, what about hearing Spareribs as someone’s name? One may think how someone went about acquiring such a nickname and what he has to do with running. Spareribs LaMothe is a Coppell resident, a weekly blogger for The Dallas Morning News and an avid runner who has grown acquainted with the Coppell Cross Country team through his daily runs at Andy Brown.
As his pseudonym suggests, he could be the new most interesting man in the world, as well as one of the most humorous. He is so attached to his nickname that he would not divulge he birth name.
Ribs has been a Coppell resident for several years now and in those years he has made Andy Brown Park his second home.
“I own Andy Brown, I just let everyone else run there,” LaMothe said.
LaMothe is joking of course, although with as active as he is on the trails, one may think he is being serious. Through his years of running, Ribs has grown quite fond of some of the Andy Brown regulars as well as the majority of the cross country team, in fact, after any given race where cross country runners and Spareribs run, you can probably find them mingling together.
“When we would go run at the park he’d cheer us on and he had a saying that he’d encourage us with,” New Tech senior Gabe Zornes said. “RTYP, run till you puke.”
This year, the Coppell High School track hosted the Run to Fund fun run and 5K on May 5 to raise money for the Coppell Education Foundation. The Foundation, although separate from the district, essentially provides funds and materials to the district and is run by seven Coppell residents, one of which is Superintendent Dr. Jeff Turner.
Since 2000, this organization has raised over $800,000 for the Coppell ISD and continues to do so. Soon enough, $1 million will have been evenly distributed to each and every school in the district.
LaMothe, having the power of media at his fingertips as a blogger plugged the link for the Run to Fund in several of his articles and was a participant in the 5k himself along with some of the friends he met through running, including Mike Ahearn, who met LaMothe about eight years ago at a running event.
“In a Lake Grapevine race, I didn’t know him, I had just forgotten my watch that day and I was running next to him because he had similar paces,” Ahearn said, “So when we got to the first mile, I looked at him and asked what time he had on his watch and he was [thinking] ‘what kind of goober is this, doesn’t even bring a watch to a race?’”
Despite the odd first meeting, Ahearn and LaMothe have grown to be friends and you can see them running together at Lake Grapevine on some Sunday afternoons.
Behind his grins and jokes, LaMothe does have a very competitive side. In fact his competitive nature is what keeps him coming to these events. He strives to win. LaMothe won his age group at the Run to Fund, running the 3.1 miles in a very solid 25 minutes and beating the majority of the runners, young and old, despite being the age of 65 and having run a marathon in Boston last week.
“I ran 25 minutes, 25…20 something. And you know, there aren’t going to be a whole lot of people in the 65-69 (age group), I look around for them and there’s just headstones,” LaMothe said.
LaMothe did not begin running until college at Albany State and often wondered why he started in the first place. However, as he progressed he began to enjoy running more and more as most new runners do.
“My roommate was the number two runner on the cross country team and he would get up in the middle of the night, run, come back all muddy and soaked and I thought he was either crazy or a hero, and I decided I would try it,” LaMothe said
His collegiate cross country years lasted through his sophomore year in college and only ended because of his move to Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Although his college running days ended, New York was the birthplace of his nickname.
Of all the facts about LaMothe, his name is most interesting: Spareribs. LaMothe got his interesting nickname years ago at a bar in New York and since then, it has grown to be more like the middle name he goes by.
“When I was in college back in the 60s in New York state, you could drink at age 18. I was 19 or so and my friends went into this bar and I was very very skinny, I weighed about 130 pounds.” LaMothe said. “And there was an old Irish bartender there and he took one look at me and said, ‘And what’ll you be having there, spare ribs?’ And the name stuck.”
LaMothe asked for his real name not to be shared despite ‘spareribs’ nearly disappearing as a name after college and there is little chance of finding it out via Google due to the popularity of his nickname today. LaMothe has worked in Texas professionally as a consultant and several years ago when a company tried to look up his past work (through Google) to see if they should use him for their company, all that came up were pages of race results.
“I decided that day that I would take back the name Spareribs for everything that had to do with running, and use my real name for my consulting practice,” LaMothe said.
Whether he is Spareribs LaMothe, the 65 year old who wins races and encourages high schoolers to “RTYP”, or Mr. LaMothe, the businessman at his consulting profession, he will consistently be one of the most interesting men in the world.
(This story was changed on Monday, May 14, 2012)
