running shorts rant: a chafing tale of woe

phaedrus · Joined: 26 Nov 2004 Posts: 37

I remember when I first started running, a few years ago, hearing occasional stories about people's chafing problems. I didn't really get it. Chafing? I thought of runners so heavy that their thighs couldn't pass by one another. On the cosmic scale, chafing seemed like such a trivial problem, like bad breath or ear wax buildup. Little did I know...

Most of my shorts are sold specifically as running shorts, and are made of coolmax or something, but I also have a few random pairs designed for soccer or basketball. So I didn't think much about it when I picked up a pair of tennis shorts not long ago. They were Head brand, 100% polyester. I did notice that they had a slightly different feel to them than my other shorts, as the fabric felt more "clingy". Interesting.

I wore these new shorts for the first time on a 13 mile long run. It was an out-and-back route with the turn-around point 6.5 miles from my home. A few miles in, I noticed that the shorts had a tendency to ride up my inner thighs, and I had to keep tugging them down. Annoying, but nothing too bad. But as the miles passed, they started to get more uncomfortable. At the turn-around point, the thigh chafing was starting to get real bad, and not long afterward it became a very serious problem. I was in major pain, and every stride made it worse. I adopted a loping duck-walk stride to try to minimize the chafing, but it didn't help much. The intense burning and singing pain was way worse than anything I had ever imagined chafing could be.

I really didn't know what to do. I was still about 5 miles from home, but running the rest of the way under these conditions was too painful to contemplate. I thought about asking someone for a ride, but was too embarassed. The only other thing I could think of was to take off my shirt and stuff it down my pants, but that didn't really help, and it looked like I was a child molester out at 7AM to scout elementary schools. Finally I decided I had no choice but to just keep going. Eventually the pain kind of maxed out, and I was able to detatch myself from consciousness enough to make it home.

The last few miles, I'd deliberately avoided looking at my thighs, for fear of what I'd see. It was bad. They were a mass of blood, my shorts were soaked in blood, and there were blood rivulets down my leg all the way to my shoes. Showering was incredbly painful; I screamed. Later my thighs scabbed up real nicely, and after about a week I was able to run normally again. Needless to say, those shorts will not be a part of any future runs!