And, when you combine cool sunglasses with your trusty visor, you just look a lot cooler anyway…

Hands down my visor is my most favorite apparel piece in my ensemble, which isn’t stocked too heavily to begin with. The nice thing about a visor is that they’re pretty cheap and some of the race venues actually give out a visor in your goodie-bag as a freebie. Score!

A common freebie-visor that can be seen quite a bit around San Diego is the Soma Half Triathlon visor. The Soma Half Triathlon is a great race and is only a 5-6 hour drive away from southern California in Tempe, AZ. The visor’s red and black colors are hard to miss and the occasional hand acknowledgment or head nod you receive from another triathlete wearing the same visor is a rewarding feeling (the camaraderie about this sport makes it so much more fun!). But, be careful about doing your workouts with the same red and black visor every single time! You need at least one or two backups to prove that you do laundry every once in a while, although, there’s no need to actually throw it in the hamper.

Grab That Visor Before You Hit The Run photo courtesy of www.shezphoto.com

After a run in my favorite visor I like to throw it in the shower and hand-clean it while I rinse off too. I’ll just use bar soap and rub it around the inside of the visor, soak it with warm water, squeeze it out and presto – you’ve got yourself a clean visor again! Hang to dry.

Besides, after you find that perfect bend in the visor bill you don’t want those powerful washing machine arms to tweak your preferred curve out of whack, so again, cleaning it by hand is the way to go. Plus, you don’t have to wait to do your laundry whenever you need a clean visor, and if you’re like me you wear your visors for every run workout – rain or shine! Unlike baseball, sweat stains aren’t cool in triathlon so just remember to wash it after every workout.

Adding sunglasses to your visor ‘look’ does nothing but improve your overall appearance, so go for it! I have a pair of Oakley’s and Rudy Project sunglasses and they both do the trick. Wearing sunglass protects your eyes and also reduces the sun’s glare, so you don’t squint as much which allows your face muscles to relax more which, in-turn, allows your shoulders to relax more and improves running efficiency overall. Just make it a habit to wear sunglasses with your visor and you’re golden!

Wearing a visor also helps shield your face from the sun’s harmful rays and even on days when it’s cloudy you should still wear a visor because those rays are still making it through the clouds, you just can’t see them.

As a triathlete, you’re outdoors so much as it is so we’d might as well try to protect our face as much as possible. Even in a sprint triathlon I’ll take the time to grab my visor on the run. It’s my trusty friend and I wouldn’t run without one!