Due to a combination of partying too hard last night and inclement weather, I'm foregoing my usual Sunday bike ride. Instead I did laundry, which I do roughly weekly.
It used to be that I did laundry when I ran out of underwear. If I ran out of shirts I might just give it a sniff test, and re-wearing dirty socks, well, who's going to know? However, triathlon training generates a lot more dirty clothing, which really can't be reworn. Occasionally I've washed bike shorts by hand in desperation, but generally the tech gear gets smelly, and it stays smelly until it's been washed in the machine. So weekly laundry it is.
So as I'm doing laundry, I note the increasing number of race shirts I own. As I finish more races, I accumulate more and more race swag, which usually includes a shirt, often a tech shirt. They are, slowly but surely, taking over my closet. On the plus side, having more tech shirts means less laundry, plus they're good to wear around when it's hot out, even if I'm not working out. But on the other hand, I only have so much space, and it's starting to look like I'll need to get rid of some of my old shirts. I don't even wear a bunch of my shirts any more, since I do laundry so often and just keep wearing my favorites. I'm already at the point where 90% of the time I'm wearing either a race shirt or a metal shirt (as a metal fan, band t-shirts are the other thing I tend to accumulate).
Then there's the other typical race swag - water bottles. I have a small army in my kitchen cabinets now. They do vary in quality, one of them is a small crappy white plastic one with "Al's Barber Shop" written on it (I still haven't used that one) and the Steamboat Lake Sprint got me the nicest bottle I own, a Camelbak with a jet valve. At this point I have enough water bottles to fill all my bike cages and keep one at the pool and have some left over. It's awesome having a lot of water bottles, but if I keep doing races, I'm just going to keep getting more. What am I going to do with all those water bottles? Do I start giving them away as presents? I'm thinking at this point that I'll get enough that I'll be able to just toss them during races, but I don't really want to do that because why throw away a perfectly good water bottle? Eventually I will just build a raft out of water bottles and take up boating.
I've gotten some unusual swag items, like a nifty pint glass from the 2011 Summer OPEN triathlon, and a headsweats running hat from the 2010 Rattlesnake sprint triathlon that says "finisher 2010" along the brim, which I've worn in every triathlon since. I almost snagged a visor at the Boulder 5430 sprint this year, because they gave away some stuff after announcing the results, but some kid got to it first. I did get a travel coffee mug though, and it's pretty nice, although it's for a running race I didn't do so I feel a bit awkward having it.
Race swag is just another way that triathlon slowly takes over your life. Your clothes and dishes are logo'd, you have finisher medals stuffed in your desk, bags of race swag get stuck in the closet to be stumbled upon later, and every day you're reminded that you are a triathlete.
Which is actually pretty cool.
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