What to do with race t-shirts

Runners can quickly develop a surplus of shirts from all of the races we enter.  Once there are too many to wear, we have to decide how to best make use of them!

I don’t run nearly as many races as alot of runners, but after a few years, my dresser drawers, closet shelves, boxes and bags quickly fill up with them.  It’s great that more and more races are offering high quality tech shirts, but piles of them quickly grow as well.  With so many new ones to add to our stockpile, it gets more difficult to “wear out” the older ones.  It can be nice to finally “retire” a shirt after it’s useful life and turn it into a rag—just to make room for the next one.

My choice of what to do with them has been to give them to family members, particularly my 4 lovely nieces (I can’t wait for my little nephews to grow more to take their fair share).  Giving gifts to kids, brothers, parents, friends of friends gives me the hope that they are becoming involved (maybe even interested?) in an important aspect of my life.  Maybe they’ll become runners and enjoy the same benefits that I do.  Maybe they’ll be proud of my accomplishments.  Maybe they’ll appreciate the fact that the sport of running is so involved with fundraising for wonderful causes.

After running a bunch of races within a few weeks, I suddenly had 4 shirts to bestow on worthy recipients.  I gathered up my nieces and showed them each shirt, telling a few tidbits of each race, to personalize them a bit.  Starting with my oldest niece, they each chose a shirt.  I was happy that they immediately put them on, so I snapped this photo:

Some popular choices for dealing with surplus shirts:

• Give them to charity.  New shirts are better than “used” ones!
• Donate to a running club which collects them for a particular charity or uses gives them to kids who participate in certain races.
• Immediately turn the ugly ones into rags and wash your car.
• Sew them into a bedspread or wall hanging.
• Use them as work clothes, especially for those dirty jobs.
• Wear a different race shirt every day of the year.

Caesar Rodney Half Marathon - Wilmington, Delaware