Holy Bloody Nipples Batman!
This is by no means easy for me to discuss. I mean, for me and possibly most guys, my nipples just don’t pop into the forefront of my mind. I do know they’re there, don’t know why but they are; and I certainly never envisioned injuring them.
As long as I am completely uncomfortable I will share even more. I try, at all costs, to avoid any jiggling, rubbing, or bouncing of any skin or loose parts when I run. So I wear thigh lenght tights under my running shorts and a relatively snug shirt. I now also, on long runs, shave the hair around my mipples (man nipples, I may be the first to coin this term) and apply tape in a cris-cross pattern over them. Without a shirt on I may look like some sort of hairy knight templar, but I do wear a shirt. I do this because of what I can easily say is one of the top 10 worse days of my life. The day my mipples fought back.
You see when you run things bounce, shirts for example. You also sweat. All science and mathematics aside a heavy, wet, bouncy shirt and mipples don’t mix – at all. So over the course of a few hours my mipple skin gave way and a nice stream of blood poured out of both of them making a neat pair of lines down my white New Balance shirt.
I have seen lots of things during a marathon. Puking, peeing on the side of a road, fainting, etc. All of these are, in my opinion, generally acceptable phenomenon on race day. But no man should be forced to endure the embarrassment of bloody mipples.
Let’s put embarrassment aside and talk about pain. I mean holy hell is there a worse spot on your body to lose skin? And there is nothing you can do about it. It’s not like you can go shirtless at work, especially with mipple scabs. I actually took a sic day after my unfortunate chest injury to spare myself the humiliation of another massive hemorrhage.
Here is my advice to those fortunate souls who haven’t had to endure this agony.
- Stay away from cotton. Cotton absorbs and gets heavy. Heavy bouncy sucks worse than light bouncy.
- Use a lube. I haven’t had good luck with this route but others have. In fact they had Vaseline stops at the Chicago Marathon. Good thinking Chi-Town. There is also Body-Glide, a “runners Vaseline.
- Shave and a band-aid. My manly chest hair prohibits the bandage from properly sticking so I must remove some. I call it man-scaping (think I stole that term from somewhere but I’m not sure.)
- Go shirtless. Not my favorite idea either but you will look far more ridiculous with bloody mipples.
- Nip-Stop. It’s a stop sign shaped stick on I see at running conventions. Looks a little chunky to me but I hear they work. Just may look like you have mini-stop signs on your nips.
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