Race Shirts

Jarrow’s shirt-of-the-day RACE SHIRTS

BY SARAH BARKER

Every day, Jarrow Wahman’s Facebook and Twitter followers are treated to a photo of a race t-shirt modeled by that toothily smiling person. The post is accompanied by race results, sometimes top three, sometimes deeper into the field. Neither the subject of the posts nor the presentation seems particularly provocative, and yet, without fail, they elicit memories, anecdotes, and digital banter—personal, poignant, full of feelings. Here are some recent examples:

“Paul Paine: I miss that guy! Huge role model when I started running in 1990.”

“That finishing time didn’t seem too stellar at the time, but today it would feel like warp speed.”

“I sprained my ankle in the first few miles and shook it off. I came across Dick Beardsley shortly after the turnaround lying on the ground.”

“My calves blew out at the top of Penance Hill where one grabbed tall grass to help yourself up its steep slope.”

“Believe I was last that year - last Voyageur too. Feeling old now with all of this week’s shirts.”

“Ah yes. 1997. I was 19 at the time. Chemically enhanced I’m sure. These men and women were kicking ass!”

Though it started as a way for a 58 year old runner with a t-shirt problem to stay married, Wahman has hit a communal nerve with his shirt of the day social media posts. “The memories and the conversations were not part of the plan, but they turned out to be the best part,” said the provocateur.

“I didn’t purposely collect, I just don’t throw anything away,” Wahman said recently, talking via Facetime from the t-shirt archive in the back room of his running store, Austin-Jarrow Sports, in Duluth. “I also kept every pair of shoes I ever wore, but shoes don’t last as long. They stink and fall apart.”

Through distractions such as school, starting a business, marriage and children, Wahman was, and is, a prolific racer and an omnivore in his running appetite. What that means in concrete terms, or cotton terms, as the case may be, is 25 boxes of race shirts, dating from 1976, when the 16 year old, underweight, haphazardly groomed youth entered his first road race, the Greekathon 10K.

“There weren’t that many races in the 70s, and shirts were a big deal. You’d wear your shirt around after the race and people would pay attention to what shirt you had on. The only time I tossed a shirt was when I went to school a semester in Birmingham, England. I brought ten race shirts with me but I didn’t have room in my bag on the way back. Those shirts—they all predated 1981—disappeared into the ether.”

If he loved the shirt, it went in the drawer. Otherwise, it went into a box, that became several boxes, that moved from the basement of his first house in Duluth to a storage shed outside his second house. Last year, Wahman’s wife, Liz, put her foot down—the shirts had to go.

One can imagine reluctantly, tenderly, he washed “a couple dozen” shirts and brought them to the store as a holding pen before the inevitable trip to Goodwill. Eventually they all ended up in Austin-Jarrow’s narrow back room. That’s where former employee Ivie Brooks, and pictures, came into the picture.

“Before they go to Goodwill, let’s take pictures of these shirts so we have a record of them,” he suggested. “The first shirt...let me go to my database…1994 St. Scholastica Reif Run, was posted on August 30, 2018.”

Wahman put on the shirt, stood in front of a wall display of insoles in his store, Ivie took the shot and he posted the photo to his Facebook and Twitter. The first post got 40 likes. Next day, the CZ Wilson 5-Miler garment

jarrow wahman started posting of himself wearing race t-shirts on twitter and facebook in 2018 and has kept at it ever since.

from the early 1980s, received 61 likes and eight comments—mostly memories of CZ Wilson’s sporting goods store. And by September 4, comments included this: “I’m seriously starting to love this shirt series.”

And just like that, shirt of the day became a thing.

The very capable Ivie helped wash, fold and organize them—races like Voyageurs, with 38 years of shirts, in their own box; the rest alphabetically. Twenty five boxes, with 10 to 30 shirts per box, reside on the top shelf of the back room above stacks of shoe boxes. Taking organization to the next level, Ivie created a Google database of shirts that had had their day in the sun and the date they posted. Once featured, the artifact was put in a plastic bag back in its labeled box. Wahman denied that this project had anything to do with Ivie later tendering her resignation.

While this system reveals he’s posted 340 shirts of the day, he doesn’t have an accurate count of the total number of his collection. Eyeballing says he’s passed halfway, maybe a couple hundred left.

Shirt of the day is Wahman’s show, the featured shirt chosen because the race date is coming up or because he has a lot of Fitger’s 5K shirts or because it was a race he won (!) on his 30th birthday(!) or because it’s someone else’s birthday and the shirt recalls, stars-aligning, the race of that person’s life. He won’t deny, sometimes he just wants to brag a bit.

“As I’ve gotten older and slower, I’ve gotten a little egotistical. I’m concerned that younger people don’t know how fast I was, so sometimes I choose a shirt from a race that I won or had a good result in so I can indirectly show myself and others I wasn’t always as slow as I am now.”

“But what I really love about shirt of the day is when they start conversations—remember how hot it was? You and I had our best times that day. It’s really nice to see people enjoying it. Some people are waiting for shirts from a race in which they did particularly well—I can’t wait til you publish my shirt. And they’re disappointed that their day isn’t coming because I don’t have that shirt. Mostly I do what I can with it and have fun and spread the love around.”

Of course, not everyone loves shirt of the day. “My training partner, Aaron Smith, only liked it once, when I posted a shirt from a race in which he beat me. Otherwise he says it’s self-indulgent nonsense.”

Ivie took some of the early photos; Liz and daughters Veronica and Sasha took some, but now most are accomplished via tripod and selftimer at his home at dark-thirty in the morning.

“People are on the internet early, so most of the photos are taken at 6 a.m. I cut and paste the results, which I look up the night before, and post it early. I usually wear the shirt of the day the rest of the day, unless it’s winter and too dang cold. Now I take shirts home with me a week in advance. These here,” and he motioned to a small stack, “are on deck.”

While the photo demands day-of spontaneity, the project creator said, race results take careful preparation, even some investigative work. For races that pre-date the Internet, he’s gone to the library and scrolled through microfilm and paged through old MDRA or USATF magazines he keeps in file cabinets at the store. “Sometimes I’ve woken up and realized I haven’t prepared. I can’t afford to do that anymore. I have to stay on top of this. It’s funny, my wife wanted to get rid of the shirts, but who knew I’d

Boxes and boxes of race t-shirts are organized in boxes and saved in a database.

be spending this much time and energy posting shirt of the day.”

The format has evolved over the year—adding results, on-model presentation (“It’s not really shirt of the day if it’s just laying there”), and facial expression. “They look better with a smile than without. Someone pointed that out. Actually, it was Gregg Robertson who commented, something like, What’s with the frown? That’s g-r-e-g-g… two Gs.”

Like running, shirt of the day is a commitment to himself and others. An upcoming ten day overseas vacation, Wahman foresaw, was going to test the integrity of the project and the sacred bond between the poster and his public.

“It’s going to be weird to wake up and not do shirt of the day. I mean, yes, I could do the photos before I leave, but that would be wrong. I wasn’t going to bring my phone or computer, you know, totally disconnect. Maybe I should post a notification of a ten day lapse in shirt of the day, and that normal service will resume.”

Of course he has favorites—whether due to the design of the shirt, or fond memories of the race and the people involved, or both. There are some from European track meets he went to in 1997 and 1998, the Salmon, Idaho marathon he won on his 30th birthday, the 1990 Victoria Day 10 Mile shirt with a photo from the 1936 edition of that race and a Leicester City (England) football jersey bearing the name of his favorite snooker player, Mark Selby. He’s currently in negotiations with his niece for photography rights to his first shirt, the 1976 Greekathon, which he let go decades ago before he realized its importance. Maybe not a favorite but certainly meaningful is the shirt he posted on his July 6th birthday, from the International Center For Vasectomy Reversal.

“I had a vasectomy reversed and then had two kids, so on my birthday, I thought it was an appropriately life-affirming kind of thing.”

Extensive as his t-shirt collection is, it is finite. As are, Wahman foreshadows, small local running stores. As it turns out, the fortunes of his retail store and his race shirt collection are terminally entwined.

“Once shown as shirt of the day, they’re out there digitally, so I’d be willing to part with them, whether that’s a trip to Goodwill, or a come-to-Austin-Jarrow-and-pick-out-a-shirt event. Right now, they can’t come back to my house if I want to stay married. And I won’t have this store forever—we’ve been in business for 35 years. Business is pretty good, but when the store goes, the shirts have to go.”

Shirt of the day provides added incentive to keep flipping on the lights at Austin-Jarrow Sports for at least another couple hundred days. Until the entire collection has been made public, discussed, appreciated, entered in the database and archived in plastic.