Running the World: The Big Question

I have another marathon coming up soon, and of course I’ve been mulling over the BIG question: what am I going to wear?

There are a few factors that reduce the options. This time of year, I generally wear long sleeves and gloves. Still, those constraints leave me with a multitude of possible ensembles. Now, I certainly can’t compete with my fashion icon friend e, who is pulling off a 30 Skirt Challenge by shopping in her own closet … and my favorite TV fashion/design gurus Stacy London, Clinton Kelly, and Nate Berkus would probably stage an intervention if they gazed into the abyss of my fashion rut. I mean, it’s hard to keep things fresh when buying a new pair of pants requires either facing my phobia of selecting a size or hunting down the elusive drawstring style that’s fit for wear outside the gym. But even if I concede that I sport almost exactly the same outfit everyday (and yes, I do my laundry frequently!), it’s not as though when it comes to aesthetics I just don’t care.

After all, it’s really for clothes that I got into running in the first place. When my awesomely speedy cousin won first place in a Fourth of July 5K in Yorktown, Virginia, I wasn’t jealous of her $100 prize: I was proud, I was thrilled! But that T-shirt, the one the race organizers handed out to all the participants (which didn’t include me)—oh, I can still picture it. Yes, the shirt I coveted. And I didn’t just want to have one. I wanted to have earned one.

Then there was that perfect first pair of workout pants I accidentally discovered at Kohl’s. When I took them to the cash register, I found out the price had been marked down even more than I thought. Don’t you love that? I’d had sweat pants before, and of course the required shorts for high school and middle school PE. Blech! I may never be at peace with my knees: I’d rather not see them. So I’m not a fan of shorts, and the sweat pants I’d owned were baggy and shapeless and made me look like a hoodlum. Those cheap little gems from Kohl’s somehow fit cute—was that possible? Suddenly, I was excited to put on workout clothes. Which meant that I needed a reason to put them on as often as possible. Which meant going to the fitness center whenever I wanted to look cute. Which meant a lot of running!

I wore those awesome workout pants in my very first marathon (and a group of older guys warned me I was going to “stroke out” because of the heat since I wasn’t wearing shorts and, well, it was July), but I had to retire them long ago. Since then I’ve encountered the wonder of an Under Armor outlet store. Still, when it comes to upper body armor, my running shirts of choice usually come from past marathons. Reading other runners’ shirts can help pass the time during a long run. I wore my black sweatshirt from the UHC North Carolina marathon in another race a few months ago and got cheers of “Go, North Carolina!” In the 2007 Dublin marathon I had on my bright yellow shirt from the Top of Utah, which generated the comment, “Top of Utah—that sounds hilly.” (Yeah, fortunately mostly downhill!) Running in Reykjavik, Iceland, in my Hartford marathon shirt, I was questioned by another runner who disputed the event date listed. Or not disputed, exactly, but he could have sworn that when he ran the Hartford marathon it was in November.

But really, it’s not the other runners I’m trying to impress. It’s the photographers, and ultimately myself, as I allow the purchase of one photo from each marathon and, dang it, I better have a good one. Early in one Top of Utah marathon I stopped off at a port-a-potty and was pleased when it turned out to be the luxury model, equipped with a small mirror inside the door. I checked out my hair and smoothed some of the wilder strands because I just knew a photographer waited not far down the road. Unfortunately, I can’t show you that pretty, pretty picture because I do not yet have photo-scanning technology.

I was disappointed at my failure to get a photo with green and purple hair in the Dublin marathon, and I don’t know that I can manage colored hair for Richmond, since time is growing short again ... but I will sure do my best to choose a photogenic running ensemble and program the decision into my autopilot tonight, since in the darkness of Saturday morning, any capacity for rational thought will have devolved into panic about not being able to pin my number on straight. Thank goodness the timing chip works even if you wear it crooked!