Finishing Kick: Pre-Race Couture
Staying Warm is Serious Business
By Rachel Toor
As featured in the May 2009 issue of Running Times Magazine
My friend and fellow Finishing Kicker, Jim Gerweck, always starts to giggle when we talk about the Philadelphia Marathon. There's nothing inherently funny about that race. It's a fabulous, fast course; the event is well-organized and always fun.
No, it's me he's laughing at. I don't quite get it. Let's look at the facts.
Most marathons start early in the morning (with some notable exceptions, where you have to get to the start early, and then wait for hours outside). Many marathons are in the fall. Philadelphia, for example, is always the weekend before Thanksgiving. In the Northeast, late fall mornings can be cold. There can be frost. There can even be snow.
Sometimes you have to walk a long way from the hotel to the start line. Sometimes you have to take public transportation, which means waiting outside for a train or a bus.
If you are, say, leading a marathon pace group, you have to get into the corrals early so that your people can find you. It's nice to be able to talk to the group before the race starts.
Runners come in all shapes and sizes. But many of us don't have lots of organic insulation. So it's not uncommon to see folks bundled up in plastic garbage bags, shivering at the start.
But not me. I have learned my lesson and have found a solution. It's just that sometimes it makes serious runners like Jim Gerweck (and my pace teammates) giggle.
I go on pre-marathon shopping sprees at my local Goodwill. I buy men's sweatpants, gigantic sweatshirts or fleece tops, and, for races that are in places that are likely to be cold, I also buy coats. Big coats. I think the one I was wearing in Philly a few years ago was a soupy green, probably from the mid-1980s. I think it was shaggy. I was wearing it over sweats that may have been pink. And, apparently, having crossed a few time zones to get to the race and having to wake up torturously early, I hadn't buttoned the coat properly. It was all askew. I looked like an unhinged bag lady.
But I wasn't freezing.
I was holding my pacing balloons and a big green sign with the time that I was expected to run, yet in the corral runners still came up to me and asked where the pacer was.
I'm the pacer, I told them.
People at the start lines of marathons are often nervous. Seeing me didn't reassure them. No, really, I said. I'm the pacer.
As the clock ticked down, I shed layers. First the coat. Then the sweat pants. Finally, just before the gun, I flung off the gigantic sweatshirt and exposed my Clif Pace Team uniform top, and off we went.
At big races like Boston, local charities collect cast-off clothes and recycle them. I've seen plenty of stuff that, if I weren't about to run a marathon, I'd be delighted to take home myself. In fact, at a marathon a few years ago -- when I was waxing hypothermic at mile 17 -- I picked up someone's sweaty and still body-heated throw-away and put it on. I'm not prissy, especially when I'm cold.
A friend recently came up with a brilliant idea: Ask thrift stores to come to marathon expos and sell "throw-aways." Who wouldn't pay five bucks for a shirt they're going to wear for only an hour? Running clubs or high school teams could do it -- they could even wash the clothes first for those more fastidious than me -- to raise money. Or sell donated new ones. How many of us have never-worn cotton shirts that we wouldn't mind getting rid of?
I've sported a long trench coat, a puffy down jacket, and pajamas while waiting for races to start. But at the 2007 New York City Marathon I outdid myself. At a thrift store I found a big fake fur coat for $15. It was fancy and had clearly been expensive, many decades before; it had a heavy and warm satin lining. I looked fabulous. For many hours. (Because that's the way it goes in New York.) A woman offered to buy the coat from me. (Because that's the way it goes in New York.) I told her she could have it for free, but she'd have to wait until a few minutes before the starting gun.
You can make fun of me all you want, serious runners. I'll be laughing with you -- especially if I'm not shivering.
RACHEL TOOR teaches writing at Eastern Washington University in Spokane. Her latest book, Personal Record: A Love Affair with Running, was published in October.