Former Arizona State Athletic Trainer and Pat's Run Founder Perry Edinger has seen Pat's Run grow into a phenomena that is deeply ingrained in the fabric of the community. With the 11th annual Pat's Run set to take place tomorrow, April 25th, Edinger was kind enough to answer some questions about the development of the event, and the impact it's had on the community, as well as the impact it's had on him personally.

I remember reading a USA Today Article where you had said of the original Pat's Run that it wouldn't have been something Pat Tillman would have wanted to occur. With how it's developed, and what it means to the community, does it change how you feel he would view Pat's Run?

Well, it's hard to speak for someone who hasn't spoken for themselves in 12 years, but the way I knew Pat, I believe he wouldn't have have wanted the attention that came with the initial run, or felt that there was a reason for it. What this has become- a way to honor and support a group of people, and to continue a legacy, I think he might embrace it a lot more now.

When we sat down to come up with some way to honor Pat, we knew that a tennis or golf tournament wasn't Pat- he'd want people to go up climb the light towers at Sun Devil Stadium or tip the rocks in Sedona, which aren't ways that groups of people could honor Pat.

So we looked at it and thought let's try this run. I wanted things to stand out and for people to believe that this was very unique, because Pat was a unique person, so we have the run end in Sun Devil Stadium and it's 4.2 miles.

Back then everyone gave out shirts or bracelets, and I said that if we gave out a really nice shirt people are going to wear it, and look forward to coming back next year. Ironically enough, it's changed the face of road racing. Everybody gives out nice shirts now. Now out in the valley you see Pat's Run shirts all over, which to me is great, and it fits into the goal that we had to give people something to come back to, always keeping in mind that people were honoring Pat.

I thought with a lot of work over a few years, we'd eventually see 15,000 people at the run. We had a guy named Jared Schrieber that threw javelin at ASU and is on the board of the Tillman Foundation, who is a pure numbers guy, and he was able to project to us within 200 people the volume of the second year. He was also close the third year. Then he came to us and told us we'd eventually hit 28,000, and I thought "no way." Now we're looking at the fourth year in a row that we should be able to have 28,000, and that's just the big run! When you talk about the kids run, which I was hoping to have 500-600 hundred kids in, we're going to have close to 3,000. That makes the kids run the 4th or 5th biggest run in the state of Arizona.

What means so much to me is that if 2,500-3,000 kids are running, then that means there's a potential for 5,000-6,000 parents to be talking to their kids about what Pat meant to them, and are encouraging their kids to get out and be active. Kids get to see how Pat's passion for things affected their parents, and that passion gets passed down.

People can look at the kids' race and say that's our method of assisting with the population of the race for years to come, which it is, but I look at it as the method in which parents are expressing how they felt about Pat, and are modeling and encouraging their kids getting off their butt and do something.

That's part of it. Pat worked really hard. I have stories upon stories of people who lost 100-150 pounds and trained for months just so they could walk or run 4.2 miles. I think about all the emails and letters I got in the beginning where people stated that they saw that Pat gave up things because he believed in something That's what Pat's Run is providing people. A way to do the same.

Absolutely. People always ask me to tell them a story about Pat. People grasp at an opportunity to get to know something about the man they've heard so much about, and it's really pretty cool.

It's always emotional for me when I'm out and I see someone in a Pat's Run T-Shirt. I'll stop people and thank them for their support and ask what they thought of the run. Usually they'll happily share their story, and 90% of the time I'll walk away and they'll have no idea who I am, which is perfect. I just want to hear how Pat's run has helped or influenced them, and remember that whatever their story is, it happened because of Pat. That's just another person that my buddy helped.