Michael: Function and Style

The light blue flowers
Hang delicately over
The cold hard soil.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

One of the most exciting aspects of racing is coordinating my race kits for the year. And I always like to start from the ground up. This year, I’ll be rotating through three pairs of race shoes; all purchased on sale from Runningwarehouse.com.

For road racing, based off the reviews and reasonable price, I was going to go with the red/yellow Saucony Type A8, but decided to switch to the even less expensive Saucony Fastwitches. For $60 and based off the reviews, I’m hoping they’ll work across a spectrum distances from road mile to half marathon. I’ll find out next weekend if that holds true as I’ll be racing in the Cottontail Half Marathon in Van Nuys.

The Fastwitches are black with grey highlights and a hi-viz sole; really nothing overly pizzazz-y and pretty in line with the trend in color schemes and aesthetics. So building up from that block I’ll go with either basic white socks or a heavenly blue. I had a nice pair of lime Smartwool thin socks but they’ve worn a hole through the big toe which is often the case when my big toes match up with Smartwool thins.

Shorts wise, I have a pair of Saucony half tights that are black with green hi-lights that I hope can pull double duty as road/tri shorts. I was lucky to get the last Pearl Izumi tri top in white with black, yellow and green trim that match my Gumby theme painted Guru tri bike perfectly. If we all don’t get some compliments at my first duathlon in over three years, I’m going to be very disappointed.

I hesitate to wear a tri top to a pure road race, as I feel it makes me look and feel like I’m in it as a training run and not as a tried and true road racer. Granted, I’m not, but I’ll feel even less so if I don’t dress the part, so I may go with a different top/bottom set up but at least I have a fall back and I can always con myself into believing I’m using this as a test run for a duathlon race down the road even though I’ll be gunning for a high place age group finish.

For trail races I have my tried and true Nike Kiger 3s for distances over 10k and New Balance Gobi 2s for shorter events. The Kiger’s are a light shade of blue and the Gobi’s are a darker shade of blue with green hi-lights. For any race I can pair those with the Saucony half tights but what I’m really excited about is doing a few longer races where I can make use of TNFs five pocket flight series 5” shorts. I love the thought of using the pockets to carry Skratch Lab chews and electrolytes and possibly going sans pack and getting by with just my Hydrapak 20 oz. collapsible that after a few sips I can stow comfortably in my shorts behind me. I really love the aesthetics of these black and grey shorts with just a touch of hi-viz along the waist. If it’s warm I can pair those shorts with the BOA shark tank. The idea of wearing a ‘shark tank’, one of our favorite shows, is just too irresistible to pass up.

I always like some random element thrown in most of the things I do, so I feel fortunate that I found a Buff cap while browsing at REI that’ll pretty well match up with whatever I’ll wear.

That all this matches with my ladies Timex triathlon watch that I got on sale last year is also a small bit of whimsy that gives me a bit of a smile.

I’m sure at some point in my early life this would’ve all had my friends wondering if I was gay, but these are different times, thank goodness, and I feel comfortable letting my inner diva stroll down the runway.