Why You Should Wear Running Shorts
The more you can convince yourself that you are legit, the more legit you become.
“The less you wear, the faster you’re there!”
I can still hear my high school cross country coach saying that exact quote on one of my first days of high school cross country. I was a sophomore and this was the first fall sports season since I was seven years old that I decided not to play football. The previous year was my first year playing football in high school and I quickly realized that although it had been a huge part of my identity before high school, it just wasn’t for me anymore. I mean, I was 5'6" and weighed barely 100 pounds soaking wet. The cross country coach noticed that I spent a lot of time on the bench and asked me to consider cross country the next fall. So after a summer of denial, there I was at 5 a.m. ready to run in my cotton t-shirt, Walmart running shoes, and my knee-length, baggy basketball shorts.
“You’re built like a runner but you’re not dressed like one!”
This is another thing I heard constantly from my coach. He was right, I was not dressed like a runner but I wasn’t about to wear those short shorts! I was convinced that I could easily run just as well as anyone wearing my basketball shorts and no one would have to see my pasty white thighs.
That first season went about as well as any average runner’s first cross country season will go. It wasn’t amazing but I made some improvements. For fear of embarrassment, I wore knee-length, black compression shorts under my uniform shorts so that no one would see me wearing those tiny shorts. As soon as the race was over the sweatpants or longer shorts were back on.
My junior year of high school was a bit of the same. I still didn’t really buy-in to the whole “short shorts” thing. I saw that most of the fastest runners in my area wore them but that didn’t mean I had to. I wasn’t some nerd that wore short shorts. I was getting a bit more comfortable with the idea of wearing them to race because everyone did but when it came to practice, and I got to choose what to wear, the shorts always came to the knee.
The spring of my junior year I started to take cross country and track a bit more seriously. I was setting and achieving my goals and getting faster. One day, a runner friend of mine and I were at the store and we saw some running shorts on sale for very cheap. We joked about how funny it would be if we wore those shorts to practice one day as a prank. We laughed for a bit and decided that the shorts were cheap enough to be worth it for a joke. We bought our first pair of short shorts and made plans to wear them to practice. A few days later, when we had planned to wear them, we chickened out. It just wasn’t worth it. I thought maybe people wouldn’t see it as a joke and that they would just think I was weird. Thinking back on it now, 12 years later, I am so glad that I am not as worried about what other people think as I was in high school. We made plans to try again a couple of weeks later but didn’t go through with it.
That summer, after track season had ended, I decided to really take running seriously my senior year of high school. There was a cross country camp held in Provo, UT every year at BYU that was for high school kids all over the country. I signed up and got ready to go. This would be a great chance for me to be able to learn from some Division 1 college athletes and run with a bunch of high school athletes from other than Arizona. As I was packing for the camp I threw in my short running shorts and thought it would be hysterical to wear them at this camp. People would think I was so funny.
The camp started on a Monday and we all got together, a couple hundred of us, to go for a run that afternoon on the Provo River Trail. As I got dressed for the run, I put short shorts on and then a pair of basketball shorts on over them. This way, if I chickened out I would still have something to run in. We arrived to the spot where we were going to run and I saw almost every other guy there wearing longer shorts and I got really nervous and decided to not ever tell anyone that I thought about wearing these tiny, ridiculous shorts. As one of our camp leaders told us that we were about to get started, I saw one by one almost every single guy at camp took off their basketball shorts or sweatpants and were wearing running shorts! This is the moment that I realized that at this camp of runners it made sense to wear running shorts! I was no longer nervous or embarrassed because everyone was wearing these short shorts! We were runners, dressed like runners!
That run was a defining moment for me. I felt like I could truly embrace this newfound identity in myself as a runner. I felt confident. I felt legit! Not only did I feel legit, I felt incredibly comfortable! The run went extremely well and I was so happy. In that moment I realized that I had been missing out for so long and never wanted to wear my basketball shorts again while running. Unfortunately, I had been so embarrassed before about wearing these short shorts that I only had one pair and now they were dirty. Luckily, I was able to do some laundry and wear those shorts multiple times that week.
When I returned to my high school cross country team that fall, my entire mindset had changed. I don’t think it was all about the shorts (the entire camp was incredible and I learned a lot about running and a lot about myself), but the shorts were easily the most visible change.
Every practice, every race that year felt different. I truly felt like a runner. I didn’t feel like a kid that was trying to run, I was a runner. This confidence translated to others on my team. Within a few weeks, everyone was wearing short shorts which was very abnormal for the culture of this team. We were changing the culture and it was working in our favor. We were runners and we looked like runners. This small change in what we wore changed our mindset and helped us improve. We were closer together as a team and we were more successful.
I ran well enough my senior year that I was awarded a scholarship to continue running and studying at the community college near my home. I went on to do well in cross country but even better in track and placed 6th in the NJCAA Track and Field National Championships in 2011 in the 3000m steeplechase.
I know that obviously I can’t place my entire running success on simply wearing running shorts. I put in hours and hours on the trails, the track, and in the gym to become the runner that I had become. True success in running, or any athletic endeavor, does not come solely from what you wear. Switching from baggy shorts to running shorts did not magically make me faster but it did flip a switch in my brain that made other things easier.
What do I do with this information?
Making the decision to consider myself a runner rather than some guy that runs didn’t happen until I started dressing like a runner, even if it was embarrassing at first. I definitely had to get through some rude comments from insecure jocks before they realized that I didn’t care. Dressing like a runner helped me in a couple of different ways that I think might help you as well.
- It gave me more confidence. When I dress like a runner I feel like a runner. When I step out of my door in the right clothes I feel like I have already set myself up for success.
- It pushed me to run harder. When I am out running and I look like a runner, I assume other people see that. When I am starting to get out of breath or tired, I know that people see me! I don’t want them thinking that I can’t handle the workout I set out to do. Dressing like a runner has kept me accountable on my runs and helped me finish tough workouts. This is especially true when I walk into the gym to use the treadmill. I am definitely the only guy wearing these short shorts and I have to back up the confidence of my clothing with the quality of my workout.
I hope that you, no matter how far or often you run, feel comfortable calling yourself a runner and dressing like one. You don’t have to run a 4-minute mile to consider yourself a runner. If you step out the door to go for a run, you are a runner. I hope that you find the same mental benefits of dressing like a runner that I did.
