When you’re running in the cold, one of the most obvious things you need is clothing that keeps you warm. Then again, you don’t want 5 layers of clothing that you’ve got nowhere to put when you start wanting to peel it off 20 minutes into your run. While this would have posed a problem back in the days when we covered ourselves in the pelts of dead animals, it stands to reason that, in this day and age, there should be a wealth of alternatives in the retail stores that exist to solve these very problems.

Well, actually, no.

After some frustrated shopping experiences today (I don’t like shopping at the best of times), I’ve come to the conclusion that sports clothing is dominated by brands that have figured out that the majority of their sales go to kids who don’t do any real sport, but look really cool in a hoodie. As a consequence, the shops seem to stock more XL than any other size (as though only fat people exercise – discrimination against normal people, I say), and you can get the same cotton sweater in 20 different colours with 40 different logos on it, and that takes up most of the floor space in the store, but looking for a decent undershirt (that doesn’t absorb moisture like a sponge) to go running in is a lost cause.

All this to say that I eventually found what I was looking for, in the “specialty section” of the store (that’s the part of the sports shop that actually sells sports clothing) – to my shame it’s branded, which is a bit of a problem since I have a Cayce Pollard view of the world and highly visible brands make me want to throw up. But at least I shouldn’t sequentially freeze then overheat then freeze again when I go running.