We’ve all seen the walk of chafe. It’s a sort of bow legged slow motion waddle where the runner is attempting to move without the suffering parts of the body (often the groin) coming into contact with anything else. It’s delightfully comical to anyone witnessing this phenomenon but perhaps a little less so to the poor person experiencing it.
As you might have guessed I have recently been having problems with this and the primal howl of pain as I lower myself into the bath has been a cause of considerable consternation to my poor long suffering partner.
As I run, the sweat trickles down my body and tends to collect between my legs and at the tops of my thighs. When in shorts it can be slightly less of a problem as I don’t wear underpants, so less sweat is soaked up by cotton pants and can’t hang around quite so long to cause too much damage. When wearing running tights I feel less inclined to run without underpants as the tights cling perhaps a bit too tightly and I am all too likely to be arrested on some kind of obscenity charge. This is when it can get really painful and I need to find a solution.
Determined to do something about it I embarked upon a little Internet research. First: what is chafing?
The website ‘healthline.com’ has this to say about chafing:
“Chafing is a common skin problem caused by any combination of friction, moisture, and irritating fabric. Prolonged rubbing on the skin makes your skin sting or burn, and you develop a mild, red rash. In severe cases, chafing will include swelling, bleeding, or crusting. “
Ouch! Yes, that about sums it up. So, what to do about it?
Webmd.com says that you mustn’t stay in wet clothes. This is good advice but if you are on a long run then you will be in your wet clothes for some considerable time. My running tights are made of wicking material which would help to take that moisture away from the skin. However, the obscenity problem remains so are there any other solutions?
It seems that there is a newcomer to this field that is becoming very popular among runners and this is the specially designed underwear, ‘Runderwear’ (I love that name). These underpants are made of wicking material and don’t have any seams to rub against the skin and add to the irritation. They are astoundingly expensive at 20 pounds a pair but look as if they will do the job.
I bought some Runderwear pants and took them on a run. They cut down the chafing considerably but didn’t completely remove the problem. I looked online to see what other runners were using and encountered something called bodyglide. This too was quite expensive at nearly 23 pounds for 42 grammes but I ordered it and went out again wearing Runderwear pants and a coating of Bodyglide. This time there were no problems at all and I sank into my bath without even a whimper.
Could I have found my anti-chafe solution?
It is quite possible, but I am all too aware that my 100km Race To The Stones will be in July and the conditions will be far warmer than those I am experiencing now. Will the Runderwear and Bodyglide pairing be able to cope with the ridiculous amounts of sweat that I produce during that particular trial or will I yet again have to do the Walk Of Chafe?