Product Spotter: Free Gear at the Broad Street Run

Like 30,000 other idiots this weekend, I decided it would be a good idea to run a 10-mile stretch of Philadelphia as part of the city's annual Broad Street Run. As much as I'd love to delight you all with a detailed, banality-filled recounting of my run, I'll try to keep things relevant for once (don't get used to it). Below is a short list of some of the promotional products the race gave out to participants before, during and after the race:

- T-shirts. Each racer was given a commemorative T-shirt prior to the run at the registration event. The shirts were manufactured by Hanes, and at least a portion of them were of the new-ish Tagless style. The medium and large shirts I saw were both tagless, but my XL size was not. I don't know if this was true across each of these shirt sizes, or just the three I looked at. Besides the Broad Street Run decoration on the center chest of the shirt, there were race-sponsor logos on the shoulder of the tee. Off the top of my head, I can remember Dunkin Donuts and Independence Blue Cross being on there, but I'm sure there were others.

Performance tees were also offered at additional cost, but I didn't get a chance to see them up close so I can't comment on their make, design, features, etc.

- Also during the registration event, which was a day prior to the run itself, there were about 40-50 booths set up with the Lincoln Financial Center, each booth loosely selling some running-related thing. They had it set up like a weird gauntlet you had to walk through to get your badge and race-day information. I kind of had tunnel vision here, not having much interest in anything that wasn't my badge or free T-shirt, but I did notice a couple freebie items being given out. The U.S. Army was giving out "support our troops" khaki silicone awareness bracelets and I noticed a high-end gym/spa handing out hand sanitizer pens attached to small flyers. Also, every booth had elaborate banner signage, most notably those comma-shaped freestanding banner-flags, which were all over the place in the hall.