Other than running track in high school and college and a few fitness jogs for a mile, my running career started with the first Capital 10K back in 1979. Since then, I have entered numerous 5K, 10K, 15K, half marathons and full marathons over the years. With each race, I received a race tee shirt for my efforts. As other runners have found out, after a few years of running you run out of shelf space or drawer space for all the tee shirts. I have a few that are special and will remain on the shelf. The Boston and Chicago Marathons and the first Cinco De Mayo 10K was held here in San Marcos back in 1979. And I have saved a few of the nicer “Better Half Marathon” race shirts to wear when you venture out. That still leaves way too many race tee shirts. Some of the older ones that have lost their shape and have a faded logo were used for a car wash a few times. But the quantity of shirts after 45 years of being involved with running or organizing races still becomes a problem of where to put them.
I was looking for a particular shirt for a date of the race out in a storage bin that I have in my workshop. Looking through the stacks of shirts from previous years, I came to realize I am classified as a ‘pack rat’ of race shirts. There were the 10 Capital 10K shirts from the first 12 races I ran in that race. The Sights and Sounds (now the Jingle Bell 5K) from 1989 (I am not the only pack rat as Darrell Rhodes found his first S & S 5K shirt from 1988) was in a stack of that race. The Chilympiad 10K and 5K race shirts were there that are no longer around. I even found the red vest with “Chilympiad Chairman” and the big logo on the back in that bin when I was the race director for that race. The Tanger 10K and 5K race shirts made an appearance in one pile. I had helped Pat Price train for the Dublin Marathon and entered a 5K Breakfast run a day before the marathon back in 2001 and found that shirt.
I found several of the early race shirts with no sponsors on the back. The Juneteenth Trail Run 5K had a full front logo but nothing on the back of the shirt. I think Harvey Miller was the sponsor. Several of the Firecracker 5K shirts did not have a sponsor on the back. I imagine the parks and recreation department was the main sponsor so did not feel they needed to put a sponsor on the back. And the unusual 1989 2nd Annual Mardi Gras 5K that listed the distance as 5000K; 5000 meters or 5K is okay, but 5000K is a distance of around 3100 miles. Several of the Red Ribbon 5K were there for the drug free program. One had a multicolored armadillo as the logo in 2001. The Country Roads 10K shirts were there. I didn’t see the first Country Roads 15K shirt in the bin but may need to dig deeper to see if it is there. The one Cross Country Race put on by the San Marcos Runners Club on Southwest Texas campus that is now the soccer field was found. The Faith Run 5K put on by the Methodist Church was easy to find as the front was a bright fluorescent orange color. CASA had the ‘Speak Up For Kids 5K’ from 2009 and was a race for a good cause. Of course, several of the ‘Moe’s Better Half Marathon’ shirts were in the pile. What do you do with leftover race shirts but put them in a plastic bag and put them in the bin? And the Rattler Run 5K from 2015 was a bright color that was hard to miss.
In that bin were other shirts of notable importance. As president of the SM Runners Club, I went to the RRCA National Convention twice. One was in Atlanta in 1985 and then in Portland, Maine in 1986 and they had convention shirts. How about the softball shirt when I managed a men’s softball team. The four sporting goods stores in San Marcos were the sponsors. How many do you remember of ‘The Field House’, Add Inn, Alert Sports and Evans Sports in San Marcos? A few weight lifting shirts were there. The 1st Wimberly Powerlifting Meet and the Central Texas Bodybuilding Championships that was sponsored by San Marcos Athletic Club were in the piles. A souvenir shirt from the Whitaker and Chavez boxing title match back in 1993 showed up. My coach’s shirt from youth soccer days with the United team sponsored by the Kiwanis Club was still in good shape. Even my coach’s shirt from when I was the wrestling coach at Northern Arizona University back in 1971 was in good shape. The Hartford Whaler hockey shirts when I was the strength coach for that NHL team. I have Joel Quenneville’s game jersey that I keep hanging up in the closet. He later became the head coach for the Chicago Blackhawks. The oldest find was my running tights when it was cold and my wrestling uniforms from 1959 college days.
