Karen writes: Farewell favourite tri-shorts

I have lots of 'gear' but few favourite items of training clothing. If you asked me what is the best designed, most reliable, least problematic, most comfortable piece of gear I would have to say my old Zoot tri-shorts.  Of course they don't make the particular model anymore, and even if they did I have no idea of what size my old ones are, or even if they are men's or women's. These shorts never chafe, pull, rub, compress or allow wobbles in the wrong places, they don't ride up, roll down, pinch, or punish me if I pull them up crooked after a quick toilet stop in a race.  If ever I was running in tricky conditions I was usually wearing those particular shorts, they might not have been the prettiest or newest technology but I could always guarantee they would never cause me any grief.

Last night I retrieved these shorts from the clean washing pile, then paused, looked at them a bit harder, and felt irretrievably sad.  The silicone strips round the bottoms of the legs had long since perished but that didn't really matter. The hole at the back which had been carefully sewn up after an altercation with a splinter on a wooden seat has marred the smooth surface for a long time but was possible to ignore too.  I now saw that the fabric had gone thin on the edges of the chamois and in other random places, and there were pulls up the side seams, and rubs on the inside legs...my favourite running pants just suddenly look really, really ugly.

I tried to put them in the bin, but couldn't make myself let them go so shut the bin lid and decided that one last run would be the thing, then I could throw them out when they were dirty as it can be hard to do that when when things are washed and dried and ready for use.  So this morning I went for a good run, a very pleasant 8km along the coast towards Duders beach, through patches of sun as it came up, patches of mist and drizzle and then rain for a bit, finally on the way back there was a double rainbow calling me home.  It was a fitting farewell run for such an excellent pair of old running faithfuls.

Mad rush to get showered, fed, get the kids out of bed, and finally me off to work and now I am thinking about what I did with those shorts...why I put them in the washing machine of course!

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