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?

How Long?

"Well your friends and their fancy persuasions, Don't admit that it's part of a scheme; But I can't help but have my suspicion, 'Cause I ain't quite as dumb as I seem..." - "How Long" (Paul Carrack, 1975)

An inebriated young man decided to provide his manhood a little boost this weekend at my expense. He did it by passing sartorial and sexual judgement on me during my walk through the (Misogynistic?) Quarter.

I was surprised. He probably wasn't old enough to have seen the original commercials (save for VH1's "I Love The 70's," maybe). The epithet would puzzle my wife and perhaps some folks who work in the east end of the Quarter.

Both would have told the young fool I'm straight. My wife would add that I'm straight but not narrow.

Must have been the running shorts.

I wear long slacks or jeans for a list of situations where I am under extreme duress. The top two situations - the only ones, in fact - are temperatures which are far below freezing and work. Really, those two are the list. I'll wear baggies and compression shorts during cooler weather, just to keep my lower abdomen warm and secure. Otherwise I wear shorts with (perhaps) a two-inch inseam, tops.

Even my regular running shorts are fairly short. I run the majority of my training runs and races in a "split" running short with no more than a one-inch inseam. Shorts any longer than that are, in my humble opinion, too...confining. I'm "fashion-ignorant," so it's easier for me (and, when you talk about the price of running gear, cheaper...) to maintain a wardrobe of black running shorts.

You can never go wrong with black. Goes with everything. Especially black.

After a Christmas party where I showed up in a black polo shirt and - what else? - black running shorts (after which I think the dress code became what is known as "beach casual") my friend Steven recommended I invest in a couple of pairs of khaki shorts for social functions.

As we watched people pass by in shorts of all sorts, ranging from Bermudas to boy-shorts, with a few pairs of flood pants thrown in for good measure last night, I asked Suzanne the rhetorical question: How long is long enough?

I already knew deep down what passed as "too long." Shorts that are longer than the kilt I wear after hare-and-hounds/hash runs - which sits at the kneecaps - are too long. I think I could tolerate mid-thigh length shorts, preferably with cargo pockets. As one approaches the knee the tolerance begins to drop precipitously.

That's not much different than running shorts, both for men and ladies.

Not that a reverse correlation exists between length of shorts and comfort. But that the length of running shorts, like any other piece of running attire, is a personal choice. A matter of taste.

If you feel most comfortable in a particular type of clothes, or for that matter a particular type of distance, course or time of year to run...go out and enjoy yourself.

As long as you want. As long what you're wearing doesn't break any laws.

Off (Or On?) A Tangent

I've run road races since 1995, but never really learned about how to run a course until I raced the 2003 Recycler Run in Ft. Walton Beach, FL. It was there Brian McMahon taught me how to run a race course. The Recycler Run course winds through a residential area, but what made this course even more interesting, outside of the live oaks on both sides through the neighborhood, were the gorgeous sweeping turns. There might have been two miles of straight road on the course...in total, but at no more than a two-block stretch at a time.

We had a gorgeous, cool, overcast morning for the race, so it didn't take long for us to get comfortable on course. I was pacing former Pensacola Runners Association president David Harris, who wanted to run 19 minutes for 5,000 meters, so we needed to run about a 6:19 pace. A pack of us were moving at about 6:20 pace, with Brian just a little ahead. We caught up with him & kept a comfortable clip. As we exited a corner, I could feel a little bit of a nudge from Brian, who was off my right shoulder. Brian & I at that time had a history of pulling a little college cross-country physicality (elbows & shoulders) on each other, so this was nothing new. I nudged him back.

He nudged my shoulder again, & said: "Mike, run the tangent." At that point I suddenly realized what he was doing. I always heard the shortest distance between two points was a straight line but to that point in my racing career had never practiced the technique. This had a lot to do with some of the courses I raced in Tampa being straight out-and-back types.

I could see a couple of guys perhaps five seconds ahead of us; at first glimpse they appeared to be drunk & weaving from the left to the right side of the road. Ah, so they were running the tangent. Brian & the rest of us commenced to play "follow the leader" until the turn-around point on the course, then headed back. I not only ran a good race, bringing David painfully close to his goal of a 19-minute 5K, but also learned that day road racing is a thinking person's game.

You can't go into a road race, shut your mind off & expect to run your best. Pacing yourself is one thing, & smart training is another, but you can needlessly waste precious seconds on a road race by not knowing the course & not running the shortest possible distance.

Most people know I measure courses for USA Track and Field certification. It's one reason I don't run a lot of races in Pensacola. If I show up for a local race three things happen: I'm asked whether the course is certified. I'm asked if I measured the course. And, I'm confronted by runners who say the course was long, according to their GPS receiver.

There aren't many races I'll run which are not on a certified course. I want to know the distance is reasonably accurate (which USATF defines as "not short"). This way I can tell how well my training has progressed over time. I've written much about the USATF measurement protocol, so I won't go into detail here. But even I forget about the technical limitations of GPS receivers & the USATF/AIMS (AIMS is the international marathon measurement authority) protocol. When I ran the Rock n' Roll/Mardi Gras Half Marathon last year in New Orleans my GPS mile splits would beep initially about five seconds (eventually a minute) before the measured mile splits. I fussed for a second, & then remembered the additional 5.28 feet/1.609 meters which were added to each mile to make certain I didn't run less than a half marathon.

But a lot of GPS wearers don't take the time to understand the measurement protocols, don't know the limitations of their equipment (up to 25 feet of error at a single point) &, most importantly, do not run the shortest possible distance on the race course.

Rather than take a winding section of road - some sections are more winding than others - let me use a standard 400-meter track as an example:

- The width of one lane of a standard 400-meter running track is 1.25 meters.

- An athletic track lane distance calculator (http://www.brianmac.co.uk/tracklane.htm) shows the distance around a 400-meter track, in lane three (3.75 meters out from the inside rail) is 415.71 meters.

- Multiply the additional distance by 12.5 (the number of laps in a 5,000 meter track race) and the total distance is 5,196.375 meters.

- The width of one lane of a two-lane roadway with a shoulder is approximately 3.75 meters, a little over 12 feet in width. Even when the five added meters for USATF's short course prevention factor is subtracted, that's an additional 191 meters of distance to run if you're one lane of road out from the tangent for the entire race.

Lose your concentration for five seconds if you're running a six-minute per mile pace & you can add a little over 20 meters to the distance run at a 5K.

In closing, even a set of legs, a heart & lungs in the best of shape can be defeated by a brain that's not prepared on race day. Knowing the course & running the tangents can save a runner from running an unnecessary additional three percent of course distance.