Many people pick up running to slim down, but let me tell you – once you get into racing, the thing that slims down the fastest is your wallet. When you do 10+ races a year, some as expensive as $100 and most at least $65, the dollars add up quickly.
But while I’ve come to justify race fees as the price to pay for a fun, endorphin-rich experience and year-round motivation to stay healthy and active, one thing I cannot come to terms with is the cost of race photos.
Now, to be brutally honest, typically I have next to no desire to purchase my race photos anyway, seeing how ridiculous I look in most. I’m too sweaty. I look fat. Weird shadows make my legs look hairy. Or fat. (Or both!) I’m making a sour face. I’m making an Edward-wants-to-eat-Bella face. I’m grinning like a maniac and look like Ziggy Marley’s illegitimate daughter (seriously, I have proof). My nose is too big… well, not that I can blame the photographers for that, could I?
In fact, the one and only person I know who manages to look amazing in all her race photos, without fail, is my friend, runner and curry lover Colleen DeBaise. She looks so fabulous, always, that New York Road Runners once used her photo as the cover for one of the races we ran together. True story. I’ve been lobbying her to spill all her fabulous race photo secrets here, as guest blogger. Fingers crossed!
That said, every now and then, I do get a race photo that is tolerable to an extent that I want to have it. Or I want it as a keepsake. I did buy, for example, photos from two races I ran while pregnant: one at six months and one at nearly eight, quite fittingly at a NYRR Mother’s Day race in Central Park. I love that those are the first photos in our baby album and most certainly don’t mind looking, er… well-rounded. (Also, notice the pacing police walking with me, making sure I don’t “run” a smidge faster than a 16-minute mile. Sigh.)
But to get to the point: earlier today I received the link with my San Jose Rock’n’Roll Half photos and a few of them are only half bad. I particularly like the awkward pose-in-front-of-finishers-wall one, where I specifically remember being told: Come over here to take a race photo for free. Free, huh? Well, I guess the “taking” was free. The having, $64.95 (before tax). That, for the pleasure of downloading all my photos as digital images. Want to download one image only? That’d be $34.95. Read more