Thursday Thoughts

I saw this one on a friend's Facebook post yesterday and thought it would make for a good Thursday Thoughts.  The question was what is the best swag you've gotten at a race and what was the worst swag?

I'll start with worst.  When I ran the Towpath Marathon in 2005 the race t-shirt had a shoe with it's tongue hanging out like a human tongue.  The shoe also had a face on it and it was sweating, although it looked like it was crying.  You can see the picture here (at the bottom of the page).  But, this race redeemed itself when I received the trophy for my second place age group finish (picture here).

Best swag.  Well, in general, I prefer no swag.  I think the price of races has gotten outrageous and I'd rather not pay for that stuff.  But if you're going to include it then make it useful or awesome.  The finisher shirts from the Rev3 Knoxville races I've done has been awesome, along with the visors (not that I wear a visor).  The local Thanksgiving races give away good swag.  The Turkey Trot gives away a free pumpkin pie for the top 500 finishers.  I don't like pumpkin pie so that one's lost on me.  Plus this race tends to have some of the ugliest race shirts.  The Flying Feather race gives away a bottle of wine for each finisher.  I got mine this year with intentions to save it after the baby was born and the family drank it.  This race also has a shirt, hat, and gloves in the swag bag.  And a Thanksgiving race that no longer exists, Pilgrim's Progress, had finisher glass mugs and free loaves of bread from Great Harvest.  Now we're talking!

So, what has been your best and worst swag from a race?