About a week ago, one of my good running friends, Monte Riding, posed an interesting question in our groups Facebook community. The question? Would any of you ever run a race naked? The thread immediately exploded with responses on both sides of the fence. I’ve placed some of my favorites below.

“Hell yes! I’m all about super natural running!” – my personal favorite for creativity 🙂

“Mind is made up. Bucket list.”

“Don’t things need to be strapped down in some way?”

“Haha…..You only live once. Why the heck not?”

“Nobody wants to see me nekked let alone bouncing around nekked. # barf “

“I’m in! I’ll bring the GoPro!”

“ I

Naturally, a little later in the evening, I told my wife about the thread and posed the question to her? What would you think if I did a naked race? She skipped right over the blank confused stare and laughed out loud. “You?!” You see, while I think of myself as edgy and spontaneous, my wife likes to remind me that I am more of a Danny Tanner from Full House kind of guy.

I always try to refute her claim that I am like Danny Tanner. It is far more glamorous to be the cool uncle Jesse type of guy.

After some playful banter back and forth with my wife, I was forced to admit, I’m very much a Danny Tanner type of individual. I almost always hate being spontaneous, and the only place I can be considered edgy is within the confines of Utah County Utah; the only place in the world where a raging caffeine addiction and the propensity to say a few curse words places you on the edgy list.

I’ve taken the couple of days to think about whether I would ever do naked race. My initial gut reaction was, hell no! I’ve documented my battle with negative body image on this blog. If I don’t even like to look at myself naked, how in the world would I deal with being surrounded by a few hundred naked people? That being said, after thinking about the idea of running a naked race, I came to the surprising conclusion that I would definitely do one under the right circumstances. What are those circumstances?

1.) I would never do a naked race if anyone I know was also participating. I love getting group photos like the one below from last Monday’s Shaggy Mountain group run.

I’m pretty sure our group dynamics would change if the photo above looked more like the one below.

2.) I would like the race to be a larger race like the Bay to Breakers in San Francisco. The race regularly has 80,000 participants and it is not comprised of 100% naked runners. Many runners run in costumes side by side with the nude ones. The idea of participating in a huge race like this one where there are naked and non naked runners alike makes me more likely to participate because there would be more anonymity than a smaller 100-200 person race held on a nudist ranch.

3.) One word Bodyglide! Being a little thicker than the average runner I rely heavily on my spandex to protect my muscular thighs from chaffing. I can only imagine what naked 5k – 10k would do to my inner thighs!

4.) Finally, I would be attending the race ALONE. Not even my wife would be allowed to support me at a naked race.

So after doing some soul searching, I came to the conclusion that I would do a naked race. After all, life can get a little dull if you never try new things. I think the creator of Calvin and Hobbes said it best when he created the cartoon below…

How about you? Would you ever do a naked race. I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.