Gloves weather

I remember reading a post-race quote from Bill Rodgers a long time ago. It was after he had a poor run on a hot day. Typically a cold weather runner, Rodgers said, “no gloves, no good race.” True enough, if you think of the iconic pictures of Boston Billy, in most of them he’s wearing a pair of floppy white painter’s gloves.

They were the glove of choice for runners in the seventies, years before someone in R & D at Nike or Asics figured out that you could sell runners thin pairs of gloves with features such as absorbent “wiping surfaces” along the thumb and back of the hand, a key pocket, pebbled palms for gripping. Before the $25 running glove there was the $3 running glove, the entirety of which was one glorious field for snot.

I’m with Bill Rodgers on the gloves races. My best times have always come when it’s almost too cold for shorts. And so I’m happy to see it turn to the chilly mornings of October, happy to dig out my fancy black Brooks gloves or the brown jersey ones from the Cumberland Farms store. Either will do to give me that particular sense that I get when I run in gloves for the first few cool days of fall. It’s a sense that I’m equipped, in uniform, ready to get down to some work.