smell – Slacker Runner

Disclaimer: I received an entry to Oakland Running Festival as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews!

Nobody likes to smell… Or at least I hope not.

There have been a few times I have finished a long run in the middle of summer and kind of scared myself. I only do laundry once a week so I always tried to plan my long runs around laundry day but sometimes life happens. As I only have space for one laundry hamper everything goes into the same one which then makes me wonder what kind of cross contamination is going on with my laundry.

Plus I have a tendency to only wear the clothes that are on the top of drawers so that means the same shirts, shorts and pants. Over and over and over again. Anyone else do that?

So yeah, sometimes I was concerned about how clean my clothes were. I always follow all the directions- wash on cool or cold, inside out, gentle cycle, line dry, etc. but still I wondered.

Enter WIN Detergent.

WIN is specifically designed for the materials found in active wear. Most laundry detergents are designed to be multipurpose. Which is great but sometimes our running gear could use a little help.

From the website-

The very properties that allow fabrics to wick moisture away cause them to attract oils.
As bacteria from your skin consume those oils, they create gases which give synthetics that telltale sweaty smell.
WIN has ingredients not found in most supermarket detergents that are optimized to remove oils from synthetics.
Not only do those oils cause odor, they impede performance. By removing them, WIN makes your apparel wick better and last longer.

I’ve been using WIN, the scented version, for about a month now. It has a very light scent- in fact I can barely smell it. But then my nose doesn’t always work so well. But I can say that my clothes have no lingering running funk smell on them! Woo hoo!

I really gave WIN a test when I left my race clothes from Holiday Half in a plastic bag for the next few days because I was still traveling. Oh boy. It passed the test!

Now the directions say to use half a cap for regular loads and a full cap for large loads. I tend to use more than directions call for. That’s more due to my brand new piece of crap washing machine than anything about WIN.

And WIN is available on Amazon and you can ship it with Amazon Prime! Sorry, joined the Prime crowd this past month and may love it a little too much. 😛

Use discount code RAVE4WIN to save 20% off any WIN purchase through January 15, 2019.

Do you wash your gear right away or let it wait?

Can you be back on track if it’s only been one day? After choosing to take another rest day yesterday, stupid ankle, I hit the park after work. Today was also my first day back to work so bring on the heels too! Wore my lowest pair as they are still more support than my tiny little flats. Too bad I can’t wear running shoes to work 🙂

Leaving work, I was so tired. Today was such a Monday, plus the first day back is never stress free. I had planned to meet my friend at the park for a few laps. However her work day was just as crazy as mine, so she wasn’t able to make it 😦

After 3 days off my plan was to go slow and walk when my ankle hurt. I also planned on only 2 laps. It would be just under 2.5 miles, small but I figured it would be a good test. Those 3 days off felt like forever once I started out. I was so sloooooooow. Which was the plan but it still irritated me. Maybe I should have run this without my GPS, but where’s the fun in that?

2 laps turned into 3, all still slow. Slow but steady with some walk breaks. I can feel my ankle, it’s not as bad as it was but it’s not exactly happy. So after tomorrow’s volleyball finals, I have decided to push my Wednesday run back to Thursday to give it a little more time.

On a funnier note, I had mentioned previously that there was a section of the park path that reeked. Today when I ran passed that section the first time; I noticed a sign but didn’t stop to read it. After the second pass, I busted up laughing and on the third pass, I stopped to take a picture. Guess I wasn’t the only one who thought it smelled 🙂