Running | Darrick Dudley

Dressing like today’s hip, fashion-forward runner is easy. First, a few questions: Are you a circus clown? Are you a school crossing guard or a highway construction worker? Do you dress in the dark? Basically, you know that you are properly dressed for a run when you step outside your door and your neighbors glance your way and start screaming, “It’s too bright! I’m blind! Blind, I say!” Good job, you!

When I first got into running, practically everybody wore plain cotton clothes. Cotton tees, cotton shorts, cotton sweats. If you were really hip, you layered cotton shorts over your cotton sweats; don’t ask me why it was hip because it was like wearing underpants over your jeans. This was about a decade after the so-called “running boom.” (We were so unhip that we still called running “jogging.”) On my high school track and cross-country teams, other than the school-issue blue and gold sweats, you were considered flashy if you wore red. We mostly stuck to shades of gray and navy.

And running shoes were not yet the technicolor wonders you see today: my first pair was dark gray. My second pair was dark gray with white piping. My last few pairs of running shoes are so bright and multicolored that it looks like one of my kids vomited up a confetti cake on our laundry room floor. (Sure, blame it on the kids.)

I can almost pinpoint the moment that really bright clothes started becoming the norm for runners: I have a cotton T-shirt from a hometown 5K in 1988 that is light gray with block letters that are black. Classic and classy. Three years later, same race, different design, this time the shirt is polyester and the letters are cursive and in neon green. Welcome to the future, runners!

Nowadays, I have trouble getting dressed for a run because it’s difficult to match neon yellow shirts with electric blue shorts with purple and green shoes and pink hats. Send out the clowns.

shirt photo for blog — On the bright side (see the clever pun I did there?), my kids won’t want to borrow my clothes. Unless there’s a “Look Ridiculous Day” at school next year.

When I was in college, I ran cross-country for one (injury-riddled) season. I used to show up to practice wearing my favorite Air Jordan shorts, baggy, knee-length, and double layered. I’m not saying the other runners were faster than me solely because of my baggy pants (there may have been a talent gap), but I spent a lot of time on 90-degree August days lost in cornfields with the other freshman runner about 3 miles behind the rest of the team, ruing my fashion choices.

I get it, though. There are good and valuable reasons for loud running clothes. First and foremost, for those of us who run on city streets, it’s all about visibility. Taking a page from bicyclists, we runners want to be seen by drivers. Bright clothing could literally save our lives.

From a race director’s standpoint, I can see why a bright shirt would be beneficial. No one wants to open the goody bag just before a race and say, “This shirt is ugly!” (I have been known to do that. I’m pretty sure I even posted a derogatory comment about the gunmetal-gray shirt I received from the 2014 Chicago Marathon in one of my blog posts. The joke’s on me: my lovely wife Jen likes the way I look in it. Thank you, Nike!)

If you’ve ever been to a marathon, you know that the starting area looks like the crowd on Day 1 of the Electric Daisy Carnival. (And the finish area looks like the crowd on Day 3, after having ingested whatever was being offered by random strangers in the parking lot.) There’s a reason for that: I don’t know how many times (one, actually) that I’ve showed up to a big race and told my wife, kids, or whoever came out to cheer for me, “I’ll be the guy wearing the blue shirt.” Good luck with that. Now I try to differentiate myself: “I’ll be the guy wearing the neon blue shirt with the pink sleeves, the shiny white capri-length tights, and the purple hat. You can’t miss me.” And I’m right: they won’t be able to miss me as I run by and wave, although they might want to deny that they are related to me in any way.

I am learning to accept that, as a middle-aged runner who is okay with change, I might have to look like George Michael (or, more likely, Andrew Ridgeley) in the video for the Wham! song “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” Specifically at the 1:10 and 2:35 marks.

Fullscreen capture 5222014 94024 PM — Q: Is this a music video from 1984, or the start of a local 5K in 2015?
A: Yes and yes.

Besides, fashion comes and goes. My middle child’s school recently had an ’80s Day, where kids were encouraged to dress like—get this—people who lived through the 1980s. Conveniently, I still have a closet full of polos and button-down shirts similar to what I had back then (old habits die hard), so she raided my closet and wore a polo with a popped collar layered under a button-down; she was going for the “rich guy who is always the villain in John Hughes movies” look. Anyway, my point is that the pendulum sometimes swings back my way. The last race T-shirt I got was a gray polyester shirt made to look and feel like a soft cotton shirt with letters so light blue and faded that one can only assume this is a throwback look. I loved it, but alas, it was too tight on me. It’s been a perfect addition to Jen’s stable of running shirts, though. I’ll stick to dressing like a clown.

The website of the Electric Daisy Carnival.

A few years ago, I placed in the top 5 in a few local 5Ks. It got me thinking that, with the right training and focus (and the hope that the best runners oversleep and miss the starting gun), I could win one of these suckers.

Then I heard about a new race for a local charity. Excited, I told my lovely wife Jen, “This could be the one!” (I had been running sub-19:00, or under 6:05 per mile, not a stellar time, but maybe good enough.) The morning of the race, I went early to the starting area to pick up my race packet. As I was leaving the tent, I looked through the packet and said to one of the volunteers, “I’m sorry, but my race bib is missing.” The volunteer said, “That’s not a mistake. This is a fun run, a noncompetitive race. We won’t be timing it.” “Oh. Thanks,” I said.

I went home and told Jen, “It’s noncompetitive. What the heck am I supposed to do with that? I don’t think I even want to do this anymore. Plus, the shirt’s not even that great.” (This makes me sound like a whiner, but in my defense, the shirt wasn’t that great.) Jenny talked me off the ledge: “Just use it as a training run. Besides, you already spent the 25 bucks to register.”

So I went to the starting line a few minutes before the race was to begin. It was very foggy. Looking around at the crowd, I saw none of the usual group of guys and ladies who win the local races. (That was the plan; sometimes, newer races are less likely to draw interest from experienced runners.) As a matter of fact, I saw no one who even looked remotely interested in running hard, save for three 10-year-old boys. Then it dawned on me: All these people were here early on a chilly, fog-shrouded Saturday morning out of the goodness of their hearts to donate money and support a good cause. I was the only jerk who wanted to crush everyone else’s spirits. I felt really small. (Which is saying something for someone who is 5 foot 4.)

The gun went off, and the three 10-year-olds shot from the starting line as if they were running a 50-yard dash. Conveniently, after about 50 yards, I caught them. They stayed with me for the first quarter mile of the race, when two of them slowed down. The other boy ran with me until a half mile into the race when, suddenly, he came to a complete stop and started wheezing at the side of the road. Poor guy. I ran on.

Now it was just me out front, and for the first time I noticed that it was incredibly foggy. I mean the type of foggy where I couldn’t see more than two houses ahead of or behind me. Before the 1-mile mark, some guy was walking his dog when I appeared out of the mist. He yelled, “Is there a race, buddy?” I said, “Yeah.” He said with shock in his voice, “Are you winning it?” “Yes,” I said.

Just past the 1-mile mark, Jenny was there to cheer me on. Two women walking down the sidewalk saw her, then me, and yelled to me, “Is there a race or something?” “Yes,” I said. “Are you winning?” “Yes.” About a half mile later, a husband and wife were setting lawn chairs up in their driveway to watch the runners when I came upon them quickly from the fog. “Hey, where’s your race bib?” the guy yelled. “It’s noncompetitive; they’re not timing,” I said. He turned to his wife as she sat down and said, “It’s noncompetitive.” She groaned. “Hey,” the guy said to me, “Are you winning?” I said, “Can I just run the race without having these long conversations?!?” but he didn’t hear me as I had disappeared into the fog.

Here’s the thing about leading a race: It’s not easy. It can be nerve-wracking. Even in a race where I was near certain that no one could catch me, I ran scared. It had always been so easy to start off relatively slowly and reel people in as a race progressed. Now, here I was, exactly where I thought I wanted to be, and I didn’t like it. I couldn’t handle the pressure.

At about 2.5 miles, I came quickly upon Jenny in my small window of visibility. “Is there anyone even close to me?” I yelled. “There wasn’t anyone even within 2 minutes of you at the first mile. Frankly, this is boring.” So with that little pep talk, I surged ahead and ran to the cheers of the volunteers near the finish line. I crossed in 19:50, not even close to my best time that year. The race director looked over my shoulder at my watch and asked, “How’d you do?”

“Well, I won,” I said.

This is how I felt when I finally won a race. Bottom left: my lovely wife Jen's thumb. — This is how I felt when I finally won a race. Bottom left: my lovely wife Jen’s thumb.

Since then, I’ve won two more races, one a 5K in my brother’s town, and another a 10K on country roads in blistering heat. Those are stories for another blog post. The thing about these races, though, is that they weren’t my best efforts and were not my most enjoyable experiences. (Other than allowing me to humblebrag on Facebook.)

I had a point, and I’m trying to remember it. Something about winning not being all it’s cracked up to be. Actually, it was pretty cool to cross the line first. But I could have done without the disbelief in everyones’ voices when they yelled out, “Are you winning?”

Darrick Dudley

Category Archives: Running

How To Dress Like A Runner (Hint: Louder Is Better)

Are You Winning?