Did you know there was such a thing as T-shirt etiquette for runners? Well Bad Ben in Kansas City created a list of etiquette for t-shirt wearing by runners. He describes this a tongue-in-cheek fun, but for many they hold these standards in the highest regard.

A friend once made fun of “twinkies”, people who wore their race shirts they just got during the race. (#4)

Most of these are pretty common such as:

1. A shirt cannot be worn unless the wearer has participated in the event. There is an exception, though: “significant others” and volunteers are exempt.

4. Never wear a race event shirt for the (same) race you are about to do. Only rookies do this. It displays a total lack of integrity and might put the bad-heebee-jeebee-mojo on you for the race. Wearing a T-shirt of the race, while currently running said race, is discouraged. It’s like being at work and constantly announcing “I’m at work”. Besides, you wont have the correct post-race shirt then…unless you like to wear sweaty, pitted-out clothes on a regular basis. If you do, then go back to the swamp, Gomer.

9. Volunteers have full T-shirt rights and all privileges pertaining thereto. So there. Remember, you can always volunteer for a race and get a shirt. I encourage this as your civil duty to be a member of the running community. Races don’t happen without volunteers, folks.

Others are more obscure or just down right funny:

6. A DNF’er may wear a race shirt if… the letters DNF are boldly written on the shirt in question (using a fat Sharpie or a Marks-A-Lot).

13. Never wear a T-shirt that vastly out-classes the event you’re running. It’s like taking a gun to a knife fight. Or like unleashing an atomic bomb among aboriginal natives. You get the idea.

19. The Spencer Guideline: If an event is canceled at the last minute, but the event shirts were already given out, you can’t wear the shirt unless you actually ran the race on that day. This means you will have to run your own unsupported event, through snow storms, hurricanes, or whatever lame excuse the Race Organizers came up with for canceling said event. If you still want to wear the shirt, you have to mark it with a sharpie, “I didn’t run this lousy event, and I’m all the better for it, thank you,” across the front of it.

HT Dmitri’s trail blog