Monday, September 24, 2007

Proper T-Shirt Etiquette :)

I believe runners' T-shirt etiquette gets overlooked and underrated all the time. Bed Ben did a great job putting it all together to get the runners’ community back to senses. Here are few of my favorite rules from his list:

2. Any race tee, less than a marathon distance, shouldn’t be worn to an ultramarathon event. This goes double for the wearing of sprint-tri shirts to Ironman and Half-Ironman events. It simply doesn’t represent a high enough "cool factor " and sends a red flag regarding your rookiness. It's like taking a knife to a gunfight. It's probably best just to wear a generic name-brand athletic shirt, and go hide in a corner until race time.

6. A DNF’er may wear a race shirt if... the letters DNF are boldly written on the shirt in question (using a fat Sharpie or a Marks-A-Lot).

10. No souvenir shirts: therefore, friends or anyone else not associated with the race may not wear a race shirt. If your mom thinks that your Boston shirt is lovely, tell her to QUALIFY for Boston herself, & send in her application early for next year, so she can earn her own shirt. A downside to this: she still has plenty of time to write you out of her will between her training runs for the big race. Note that your mom CAN wear your finisher's shirt under one of these 4 conditions- 1) you still live with your mother; 2) she funded your trip to the race; 3) she recently bailed you out of the slammer; or 4) All of the above…

12. Your t-shirt should be kept clean, but dried blood stains are okay, especially if it is a trail race or a particularly tough event. If you're an ultrarunner, you can even leave in mud and grass stains, (and porcupine quills). Not washing-out the skunk scent is pushing the macho thing a bit too far, though.

14. Also: never wear a blatantly prestigious T-shirt downtown or at the mall among non-running ilk. People will just think you have a big head, which you do. You'll also get stupid questions, like, "how long was that marathon?" If it's a shirt to a 50 or 100-miler, they'll think it's a shirt for a cycling event or just think you're totally nuts, which (of course), you probably are.

21. By the way, if you don't know what terms like DNF, volunteer, or Significant Other are, then you shouldn't wear any race shirt until you know what they mean, and you shouldn’t have any meaningful relationships, either…

Read more about it in the Bad Ben's blog.

P.S. I know these rules might sound like over-the-top to some people, but here is a proof they are anything but a joke:

http://dirtondirt.blogspot.com/2007/09/bad-bens-post.html
:-)))

4 comments:

Ben, aka BadBen said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog.
I agree, there needs to be a "DNS" rule.

Happy trails,
Bad Ben

Ian said...

Thanks, those are really good.

Stephanie said...

Some I had know, others I didn't! Personally I never wear a shirt from a previous race, just to be on the "careful"side.

I saw you signed up for High Desert 50K. Me too! Looks pretty awesome - but in the pics I can see it must be cold in the desert during that time...

Dmitri said...

Steph, here is what they say about the weather on their web site:
"We generally have great running weather during December—sunny and cool. However, Mother Nature can occasionally bring in either warm weather or a winter storm. Temperature on race day can vary from 30 to 80 degrees!"
Huh? So is it usually hot or cold there in December? Sounds like it might be completely anything...