What Can That Be Lying In My Drawer? Running Shirts

Suzanne has a couple of bags sitting in the corner of the bedroom; she intends to leave them for pick up by the local thrift store. Guess that means I can finally abandon the fleeting hope of fitting into two or three pairs of walking shorts I've had tucked away for the past four or five years.

I liked those shorts, but I guess there was little to no chance of getting back into them. Not without a crowbar. I'm not going to blame it on the difficult-to-prove fact cotton can shrink over the course of ten years. I'm also not going to blame it on the easier-to-prove fact I'm close to the beginning of a middle-age spread. Not as close as I was last year, but still close.

It's all right. I've got a lot of shirts which should have NEVER come through the front door of my home lurking in my closet. There are a dozen ties which will be out the door faster than you can say "Jimmy Buffett."

Most of all, I have more t-shirts than any one man should EVER have.

I'm not ridding myself of the technical fiber running shirts, nor the ones I earned while running college cross-country. Those shirts still fit me like a champ.

I'm parting ways with the two dozen cotton t-shirts which lay at the bottom of my bottom dresser drawer, the ones from races way past. Which got me to thinking about shirts.

A friend from the local running community once said on a Wednesday evening run the factors he considered necessary for a perfect race: An accurate course. Plenty of beer. Accurate timing and scoring. A good shirt.

Like Socrates, asking the question of what particular quality or qualities makes a shirt good is not going to make you friends with race directors. The vast majority of races where we live either have what I consider to be great or poor shirts. I prefer to judge a shirt on these qualities:

Wearability. This particular quality places some shirts on a very fast track to the donation bag. Long-sleeved "windshirts" and cotton "wife-beater" tank tops are at the bottom of the wearability spectrum. Solid or near-solid-colored short-sleeved (or sleeveless) shirts...even if they're dark...are better, in my humble opinion. And, why do I rarely if ever see a race shirt in a heather gray or a tan? From the race director's view, white is less expensive to buy and less expensive to screenprint. Please. I beg you. Less beer; better shirts. Trust me...I'll be happy.

While I'm on the "anti-white-shirt" rant, don't want anyone to think I'm not patriotic, but shirts for events around Independence Day loaded with American flags, red, white and blue, fireworks, firecrackers, and the like are absolutely NOT wearable. Except on the Fourth of July. Let's start to use a little bit of artistic imagination.

Artwork. How many times have you gone to a race and seen the same artwork recycled from year to year? One particular race has variants of the club's mascot; in their defense, the past three or four years they have seen fit to commission very good artists. But if you do a race over the course of a few years there's only so many ways you can tweak a logo.

There's a race I've run a couple of times in which the awards are what I've heard described by local runners as "shirt-on-a-stick." Yes, it's the race shirt mounted on a wood-frame, much like a canvas. To the event's credit, the artwork is a take on one of those gorgeous Gulf Coast sunsets. However, if I'm running well "enough" I'll have the art on the wall, which means I won't consider wearing the art on my chest. Ah, but it's a white, cotton "wife-beater" so I guess that's a moot point. To the donation bag.

Advertising. Who sponsored this race? In so many words: who paid for this shirt? The location and size of the logos can push the decision of whether the shirt gets to stick around for a few years. One of the first races I ever worked, a college cross-country program fundraiser, was sponsored by a law firm. The printer conveniently forgot to print the firm's name, so we had to send the shirts back for a re-printing. We made the printer pay penance for the crime by printing the law firm's name and information on the sleeve, nice and high.

Some of the local runs seem to have a thing against either too many sponsors - or too many sponsor logos perhaps - on their event shirts. I'm not certain as to particular reasons, except for perhaps aesthetics...or economics.

Speaking of printer screw-ups, the shirt for the local 5K prediction run, one of the largest in the country, had the word "STAFF" conveniently placed on the back about three years ago. What possessed the printer to do that, I'll never know. Perhaps it was due to a communications breakdown. But it's one of those things which makes people hang on to shirts.

Value. Suzanne and I are most likely to hang on to a shirt, regardless of how badly it was designed or how cheaply it was produced, if it came from a race we did as part of a business trip, or an RRCA convention, perhaps a personal best...or personal worst...are hung on to a little bit longer than others. In fact, many of them are neatly folded and tucked away in a closet which I don't go near, save for right before Thanksgiving and right after New Years'. There are a couple of windshirts and rain parkas in the mix, so the shirt type doesn't matter too much.

The race shirt, especially the really good race shirt, is an inexpensive and enduring method of event advertising. Good shirts stay around and draw the attention of runners. Bad shirts draw the grease from bicycle chains and the dirt from automobile hubcaps. Both have a value, but to different communities.

Think about your favorite race shirt. What makes it special? Why is it still in your drawer?

Keeping It Weird...Wherever You May Be

A couple of weeks back I stepped off a plane into the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport terminal. This terminal definitely was like no other I've been in. Live music in the terminal. Really. As I made my way toward baggage claim I couldn't help but notice in one of the souvenir shops a rack of burnt orange t-shirts with white print: "Keep Austin Weird."

Having been in this particular city a few times back in my young adult stage - during college football season - there's no doubt a town like Austin is truly, er, out of the ordinary. I recall a walk through a shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon. The public address system stopped the Muzak to announce the UT football score, followed immediately by "The Eyes of Texas." Every local, in Pavlovian response, began to "Hook 'em Horns." Nearest exit, if you please?

Fast forward three decades: I learned, after my first Shiner Bock of the week, the "Keep Austin Weird" campaign was developed to encourage tourists and locals to patronize local businesses. My co-workers and I proceeded to be as "weird" as possible that week. Each evening, after we managed to free ourselves from our work, we ate in locally-owned restaurants, drank locally-brewed beers, and sampled some of the best cuisine and culture the area had to offer. But, the story ends badly; I was disappointed to find no convenience stores (with gas pumps) open at four in the morning on a Saturday. One pockmark on an otherwise entertaining, "weird" sojourn.

But "weird is not new for me. To paraphrase the old Barbara Mandrell tune: "I was weird when weird wasn't cool." Suzanne and I make the effort to go either where the locals go to eat, drink and be merry...or patronize businesses which are locally-owned and operated. We keep a short list in our minds of places to go when we hit town, with a slightly longer list of places we want to go check out in the near future. We try to hit at least one new place each time we hit the road.

Being "weird" does some fantastic things:

You never lack a good story. Who would have thought Roscoe, the cook who made Suzanne's absolutely house-rocking black bean burger, and my "Cajun Lucy" the other weekend, was a former mechanic and construction worker? (Maybe a construction worker, because he built one hell of a cattle bomb for me.) Or the fetching young lady with the streetcar tat tending bar is training for a half marathon with her daughter?

You always receive a warm welcome. We dragged a couple of our local running friends down from their planned dining locale and planted them in front of Roscoe for some of his fare...turned them on to a Baton Rouge brew and all. When we came in you'd have thought it was an episode of "Cheers." I'll take love like that when I walk into a bar any time.

Word gets around. One of my former preachers once talked about "the law of one-hundred-and-fifty." He said that in our lifetime we have the ability to influence the opinions and habits of one-hundred-and-fifty people, at the least. If I'm a business guy it's in my best interest to treat every customer and every person I meet with kindness, courtesy and respect: even if it doesn't directly affect my business it can affect my reputation. Depending on how tightly-knit your community is that number expands farther than you can imagine...think of the "Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon" game if you want to disagree.

"Weird" is not strictly an economic state of mind. It is also a state of personal character. Not everyone needs to be "vanilla," "corporate," or to follow the crowd. It takes strength of will to decide what is "true for you," and to continue that course to the best of your ability. Some times that means solitary run sessions or not racing every weekend.

You don't have to be a traveling fool to keep things "weird." You can keep it "weird" wherever you may be.

All you have to do is keep your eyes and your mind open.

Wanted: More Readers Or More Runners?

“You have to believe most bloggers have few if any actual readers. The writers are in it for other reasons. Blogging is like work, but without coworkers thwarting you at every turn. All you get is the pleasure of a completed task.” - Scott Adams (Creator of "Dilbert")

My wife & I were chatting over dinner & a beer after last night's track workout; I had divided my attention between Facebook posts, GPS data & (naturally!) Travel Channel's "Man v. Food," but I knew listening to her would increase the degree of domestic tranquility. And if I have not learned anything in nearly seven years of marriage, I know domestic tranquility is a very good thing.

Suzanne received an article on search engine optimization, or SEO, from a friend in her professional field. For populations (I also am one) not involved with the "modern" internet, SEO appears to be the process which makes a particular web site, business page, or blog come up closer to the top of the list when using a search engine like Bing, Google, or Yahoo. My 22-year-old nephew once told me about the same stuff, but it's difficult for an old guy like me to listen to someone who (at the time) looked exactly like Justin Bieber. But I'm starting to digress.

Suzanne started to describe to me some of the things SEO experts would recommend I should or could do to draw more traffic to my blog. "Well, they recommend you have a catchy title."

I think I have that one down already; besides, it's a little too late to rename it. To me, the musings of a running coach about technique, gear, life, & the occasional minutiae of run training, all based on the rhetorical preface, "If I Were Your Coach..." is brilliant. I don't write like I possess an all-encompassing body of knowledge, as some of my friends & many of my detractors would be quick to point out. What I do write is more of an "if I were in your situation" kind of advice. If you sat with me at the local bagel shop on a Saturday morning after track workouts & heard the questions I used to hear all of the time, you'd understand the title.

"Your post titles, written material, & topic labels need to be provocative. In your case, I would maybe use labels like: 'i want to run faster,' or maybe title one of your posts 'Fifty Ways To Meet Smoking Hot Runner Dudes/Babes,'" she said.

I referred back to a recent post & read her the labels I commonly use, which seemed more realistic to me. At this point it was high time for bed, at least for her. I stayed up for another five minutes to see how close Adam Richman could come to tossing his cookies in an Italian food eating challenge. It's starting to feel more like pro wrestling, less like combat between man & food...especially after I didn't see his name & accomplishment of downing 15-dozen oysters posted at Acme Oyster Bar when I was there last month.

Suzanne was on my computer this morning, & typed "I want to run faster" in the search engine. I know, because some "Send Me A Check For 150 Dollars And I Will Send You My Sure-Fire Satisfaction, Personal Bests, Smoking Hot Runner Dudes/Babes In 90 Days Guaranteed Or Your Monkey Back Running Plan (a tip of the running cap to CAPT Dave Bondura for his "Monkey Back" guarantee)" website was still sitting up on my laptop as I was running out the front door, late (as usual) for work.

I guess if my livelihood was like that of my friend Pat McCrann, & I needed to get eyes on my thoughts, hearts/minds/checkbooks/credit cards & PayPal pointed my general direction so I could pay the mortgage/car loan/utilities/pediatrician/grocery bill, then I'd be a little more gung-ho about SEO. For a guy like me who "just happens" to be a coach, my mission is to get more readers & more runners...a few at a time. It's better than wringing my hands trying to solve world hunger or boil the ocean.

Perhaps some day I'll make a living out of being a coach. Right now it makes the real employment tolerable; it's easier to step into the office in the morning when I know what is on the agenda at the end of the day. Many times that's what REALLY gets me out of bed.

When Your Local "Mom & Pop" Store Ain't Making The Cut

I grew up in a small town in southern New Mexico, 35 miles north of the Mexican border; a solid hour's drive from two university towns & a two-hour drive from a third. When I first moved there in the early 1970s we had a couple of small department stores, a Sears & Roebuck outlet, & a Montgomery Ward outlet to choose from when it was time to shop for clothing or durable goods. By the time I left home there was a K-Mart providing a choice to folks when it came time to comparison shop.

Wanting a big-ticket, major-brand item usually meant either you hoped the local store had it in stock, you took a major (one-day) road trip to Las Cruces or El Paso, or you ordered it through the catalogs & hoped for the Postal Service to do their thing. Thus, I grew up accepting a slightly less-distinguished brand name to support hometown merchants. More often than not, these merchants knew to do right by you, lest you take your business to the catalog outlet or drive to the big city. And you noticed local merchants would keep their business in town as much as possible.

Moving here has been like being in my home town, but with the internet added. I lived in Tampa for 16 years, & had no lack of shopping malls, booksellers & sporting goods purveyors; specialty stores of every type in which to spend my hard-earned dollar. As a small-town guy who never really lost the "spend less if you can" gene instilled during his youth, I would hit the "mom & pop" stores first, then go to the major chains as a next resort...if I really needed the item.Sometimes, a visit into those big stores could make you feel like you were an interruption in their day; if you weren't a top shelf musician or athlete (of which I was NOT) you weren't getting the attention of some clerks, even if you had your AMEX stapled to your forehead. To a lesser degree, some of the "mom & pops" would treat you that way...but if you were smart you knew you could raise your voice, & let them know "I chose to come here rather than go to such-and-such, so you better appreciate my business, damn it."

I've shamelessly plugged stores who have done right by me. I've also shunted friends to alternatives when the stores haven't done right by them. When I've recommended another store it's come with a certain degree of loss to my reputation, because I like to think I know the best place to purchase stuff.

Fortunately for me, and a few of my friends, when the local "mom & pop" decides to not do right we have the internet to back us up. If you're willing to do a little bit of research or play around on a few web sites you can sometimes find what is the best deal...and go back to the recalcitrant "mom & pop" with some ammunition, to say, "I can get this for this much at such-and-such a place, so you better do right by me, damn it."

Four on-line examples I want to recommend:

First of all...there's nothing like eBay. Talk about a place where capitalism is at its best...& its worst. You can find deals there...and you can get screwed there. But you also can find out what comparable items have been sold for in the past, as well as find out how reputable the seller is. If their rating numbers are low, tread carefully. If there's a reserve, odds are good you aren't going to get a good deal. I have several staple items on search, so I receive an e-mail almost daily of stuff for which I show an interest.

Amazon.com has a great search engine, where you can find electronics, books, music, computers, videos, & so on. They were pretty much the first one with "intelligent search" algorithms, which would recommend "stuff" to you based on your interests. A kinder, gentler form of "suggestive selling."

If you're looking for books, especially the ones which are out of print or you're willing to settle for used, abebooks.com has a search engine from hell. I found an Australian reprint of John Parker Jrs.' "Once A Runner" for 1/6th of the cost of a beat-up first printing. Reads just the same.

Shoes of all kinds can be found at Zappos.com. Not only can you find great stuff there at reasonable prices, but their shipping is free...well, I know there's nothing that's really free, but the shipping charge is hidden well within the cost of the shoe.

So, when "mom & pop" have decided to disown you, or at the least treat you like you're a red-headed stepchild, you do have a recourse.

For A Few Dollars More

This past week, my loving wife closed our membership to the local YMCA & opened an account with the local World Gym franchise. Our reasons for the change-over were more for practical reasons and less for economic ones, despite the nearly-equivalent charges. Well, we got a good deal because she's marketing-savvy & I'm willing to provide coaching services to runners. When you take away my wife's tanning it was only a few dollars more than the Y.We gained 24-hour, seven-day access to the facility; definitely outweighing any economic disadvantage. While it's been a solid decade or more since I felt the irrational desire to work out at 1:30 in the morning, there are stretches when my wife would rather put her infrequent insomnia to good use. It also takes away any of the weather-related excuses I could use (to quote my coach, one excuse is as good as another...) on those recovery run or track workout days. Even the beat-up days, when I'd be better off working on the elliptical trainer or the stairmaster, are easier to fit in the schedule...even more so when you live four blocks from the joint.

Okay, I do miss the spectator aspect of working out at the Y near my home; mamas & chitlins playing around on the weight equipment or pedaling at slow/no speed on the exercise bikes. The unattended kids were more of a hassle. I do not miss the little booger whose father was watching the other kiddo wrestle...decided to have a little Eddie Murphy-esque Let's See What We Can (Mess) With Next moment with the weight-assisted pull-up machine. The crash of metal parts summoned the father back into the room, where he proceeded to give my wife & me the stink-eye. Hey, buddy, not my d*mned kid, but yours. If he was mine his @$$ would be sitting down on the floor, or whooped on by now.Of course, at WG I have the privilege of working out on good quality equipment. Well, most of the time. I've learned which exercise machines are useless as breasts on a boar hog in the past week...which would include nearly anything aerobic in nature built by Cybex. There are certain bells & whistles every athlete or fitness enthusiast loves, there are others which are nice to have. Sometimes there's too many bells & whistles, which invariably ring/honk every time you turn around. Not so good. And, regrettably, there is a right way & a wrong way to display exercise data for the enthusiast. Scrolling through data is never a good thing. And the Cybex treadmill I used last night had that particular function. Worse yet, it would not allow me to hold the scrolling on the total distance, but kept jumping back to my heart rate, calories, METs, etc., etc., & so forth. As I mentioned to my running friends in my daily missive to them: Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, Oscar?
So everything works itself out, or seems to. I'm certain to rave about how nice it is to have all that equipment once the rainy season kicks into full force.

Looking Past The Right Now

While I'm not the most savvy person on financial matters, I do know when something smart comes past my ears. One of my fellow Toastmasters spoke on long-term investing this morning; she mentioned a little-known fact at the front end of her speech on individual retirement accounts that just might fit the running realm, too. The graph above cites the number of times the word recession was mentioned in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The gray bars are the periods of time when the economy was really in a period of recession. It either means one of two things: Economic writers are full of unprocessed fertilizer material. Or, economics is more difficult than we all think. Perhaps it means both.
No, what it means (in my humble opinion) is that by the time folks figure out what is happening around them the situation has nearly passed. If I translate this to training for the typical runner, it means without developing a long-term goal and a corresponding training plan that spans at least six months, and perhaps even a year-to-two years, the period of opportunity (where the individual athlete may most benefit from training) may long be past. While (nearly) nobody in their right mind would undertake a six-week training period for a marathon, there are plenty of persons who will jump into a 10k, 15, 21.1k race with little or no training whatsoever to prepare for the distance. Even more amazing is when they race, have a performance that doesn't meet their expectations, and complain the training plan the coach provides is wrong for them.

No. You have to look past the immediate. It's not just the elite athlete who benefits from looking three or four years up the road, beginning to visualize where they want to be at that point. Beijing, and the starting line for the events, were in the minds of every distance runner, sprinter, and triathlete probably from the day after their competition in Athens, or the day after the Olympic Trials if they failed to make the team. That vision, that goal, is probably the main thing that drove each Olympian to get out of bed and onto the bike, the track, the pool when it was too dark, too cold, too hot, too early, too whatever for the rest of us.

It takes more than a pithy bumper-sticker-quality statement, like Maurice Greene's 'to be number one you have to train like number two', to motivate. It's probably why I prefer to save that sort of stuff for myself...usually when I am in the middle of a seemingly senseless repeat workout, or dragging Speedo-clad butt in the pool and not feeling like I'm getting any faster or stronger.
As Coach Ethan Barron says, 'if you don't truly believe what you are saying, then don't say it.'

Of course, there's always the choice of cycling from pool to pool, as Frazz mentions. That's why I am at the track three days a week. There's always the never-ending hope friends will return to (as some outsiders used to say) hard-core training. So, even I have to look beyond past the immediate, the very quiet, very cold and damp right now to the warmer, more cluttered and sunny afternoons of spring.