With a number of races scheduled for San Marcos, I started to think about what brings a runner to the race. First item is the race organization and the course. A poorly organized race will see a declining number of runners each year. And while some runners like to run hills, the majority of runners tend to stay away if the course has too many steep hills. Most runners will not mind a couple of hills.
The next items seem to be the race t-shirt and the awards to the fast runners. I mentioned that it is the small details that often go unnoticed to race organizers. Ordering race t-shirts may seem like a small item, but it is one of the major reasons a runner enters the race. And that “small” detail can get complicated when the person in charge of ordering shirts looks at all the options available. First is the color of the shirt. White isn’t one of the better choices for an active runner. And then you have to choose the fabric of the shirt. The cheapest shirts are a simple cotton shirt. These were one of the only choices back decades ago and getting a pre-washed non-shrinking cotton shirt was a better choice. The 50-50 shirt of cotton and nylon was a favorite for many years. Then the hi-tech shirts became affordable and the shape and color of these shirts lasted many years. I recall some of the early cotton shirts that either shrunk or lost the shape of the shirt after the first washing. For the sponsoring advertiser this wasn’t especially liked as after the runner wore it once it was never seen again. They did make good rags for washing the car or dusting the house.
As for colors, this can be another area that can make a shirt popular or not. Dark colors such as black or navy blue are okay in winter months, but for a summer race, the better choice is lighter colors. I had a couple of my races with fluorescent colored shirts. One was the safety orange and the other was a lime green. Runners liked them because they could wear them when they would ride bikes for training purposes and it made them very visible to cars. For choices, it might be a color that represents the sponsoring organization. And for a few years the camouflage pattern was popular. The only problem was the logo on the shirt had to be a white or bright contrasting color that would stand out.
