Wear socks instead of gloves for your winter runs
As someone who grew up in the subtropical US state of South Carolina and has spent the past three years living in the colder state of Pennsylvania, I’m still learning how to dress in the winter. More importantly, I’m trying to figure out what gear works best – and is cheap.
Often, I find that students strike this balance the best. They’re frugal and inventive.
A few weeks ago, on a chilly day, I ran into Maura Timoney, who studies at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania and is a member of the track and cross-country teams there. As I was standing shivering on a street corner waiting for my friend to meet me for our run, she jogged past wearing her trademark ‘sittens’. Sock mittens.
Timoney has Raynaud’s syndrome, a condition which causes poor blood circulation to the extremities, like fingers and toes. In high school, her hands would get so numb on cold days that she’d be unable to untie her shoelaces, so her coach suggested that she wear socks as gloves. The rationale? Since socks don’t have fabric that separates fingers like gloves, they are better at trapping body heat.
Timoney soon realised that the strategy worked and has been doing it since then for any run below 7°C or so. In fact, she reserves the same pair of Under Armour crew socks for her hands each time – nothing fancy.
After bumping into her, I tried the method for myself on a few runs. I put on a pair of semi-threadbare Adidas quarter socks for my seven-mile jaunt in near-freezing conditions – and it worked. Mostly.
My hands were warm throughout the run and my wrists, especially, were cozy. On a colder run later in the week, I tried out some merino wool hiking socks that were even more insulated. I’m a firm believer that the best running gloves can act as a good handkerchief for wiping your nose – and socks are perfect for this, too.
However, there are two immediate drawbacks to wearing socks as gloves.
One is dexterity. I found it more difficult to press the buttons on my running watch without full use of my fingers. Plus, if I wanted to use my phone or eat an energy gel, it was near-impossible without taking them off.
The second is the wind. The day I wore the merino wool socks was gusty and, while my palms were pleasantly warm, the outside of my hands took some wind. (Perhaps a more optimistic way of looking at this is that they’re breathable.)
Still, I was encouraged by my experiment and surprised at how common wearing socks as gloves is.
Between my trial runs, I put out a poll on my Instagram story, asking my runner friends whether they’ve ever worn socks as gloves. Surprisingly, most had. Of the 53 people who answered, 34 of them (64%) said that they’d tried it before.
Joe Allegro, who studies at Moravian University in Pennsylvania, wears them exclusively. In high school, his coach – Jim Schlentz at Colts Neck High School in the US state of New Jersey – would pass out socks to his athletes who didn’t have gloves. The distance team, which is routinely one of the top in the state, would wear them on brisk days during cross-country season or before races.
‘I thought that it was normal everywhere,’ says Allegro.
Many of the Colts Neck alumni who now compete in college still keep up the practice. Like Timoney, Allegro believes that socks trap body heat better than conventional gloves. He saves his nicer socks for his feet and wears his worst ones on his hands. ‘Most of the time, I’m not even matching,’ he says.
For some runners, though, sock gloves are reserved for special occasions.
Alex Predhome, a 31-year-old tech worker who lives in the US state of Massachusetts, has worn socks on his hands for some of his biggest races. While he typically sticks to traditional gloves on training runs, he’ll often opt for tube socks on cold race days.
He first tried them at the 2018 Philadelphia Half Marathon. Although it was a cold November morning, Predhome expected to warm up throughout the race. So, instead of worrying about stashing his gloves in his shorts or discarding them entirely, he threw on a pair of cotton tube socks. He didn’t care if he had to part with them, in the same way that runners at Abbott World Marathon Majors don’t mind taking throwaway clothes to the start line.
‘I just liked the idea of having disposable clothes that I wasn’t emotionally attached to at the time,’ he says.
The socks were so comfortable that Predhome forgot to take them off. He then wore socks again the following month at the USATF Club Cross-Country Championships in Washington, US, which involved a 10K race. This time, Predhome chose long football socks, which effectively acted as arm warmers as well as gloves.
Predhome solved the dexterity issue, too. At the Philadelphia Half Marathon in 2019, he cut five small holes for his fingers in one hand, which meant that he could grab water cups and fuel. When he wasn’t reaching for anything, he would retract his fingers back inside the sock. (He admits that he essentially reinvented the concept of gloves here.)
Predhome, along with Timoney and Allegro, have leaned in to their sartorial choices. The two students pride themselves on being sock wearers and don’t worry about the occasional weird glance from a passersby. ‘I guess that it’s become my thing on the team,’ says Timoney.
Predhome last wore sock gloves when racing the 2023 Boston Marathon. It was a cool day, made cooler by the spitting rain. This time, though, Predhome ditched the socks when they started to get soggy before the 10-mile mark. He finished the race in 2:29:48 – his second-fastest marathon to date.
This April, he’ll wear them again for the 2024 Boston Marathon, if it’s cold.
‘Not all gear needs to be flashy,’ he says. ‘If it works, it works.’
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