{"id":1956334,"date":"2026-05-26T16:25:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1956334"},"modified":"2026-05-26T16:25:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:25:00","slug":"fanny-packs-are-race-day-game-changers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1956334","title":{"rendered":"Fanny Packs Are Race Day Game Changers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I don’t like keeping things I don’t use<\/a>. That’s normal enough, or at least I’d like to think so. Anyway, I recently ended up with a fanny pack for mostly irrelevant new travel backpack reasons, and it seemed too nice to give away, but I had no idea what I would use it for since I already have a daypack for short hikes. But on a whim, I took it to the Indy 500<\/a>, and gosh darn it, this little bag is exactly what I’ve been missing on race weekends.<\/p>\n

Usually, I just show up to a race with a backpack, because those are big enough to fit a laptop, and I need my laptop. But I don’t always want to carry a backpack around, and as a result, I end up stuffing my pockets with more stuff than said pockets are meant to carry. It’s inconvenient, but it’s less inconvenient than carrying a backpack at all times. You know what’s been incredibly convenient, though?\u00a0This silly multi-colored fanny pack that I (in retrospect, incorrectly)\u00a0never would have spent money to buy if I’d seen it in a store.<\/p>\n

It’s too small for my laptop, but it fits pretty much everything else I could possibly want to carry, especially at a race where the weather could turn at any moment. Glasses case? Altoids? Ear plugs? Phone charger?\u00a0Off-brand AirPods? Sunscreen?\u00a0A spare watch?\u00a0Mid-day meds? A\u00a0bottle of liquid adult nutrients? My new fanny pack has room for all the race essentials. It’s also compact and adjustable enough that I can’t think of anything better suited for a race. And you can carry one with<\/em> a backpack?\u00a0Clearly, I’ve been missing out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But we learn, and we grow. And maybe publicly admitting my mistake will be the nudge you need to finally pull the trigger on a new fanny pack before your next race. Even if they \u2014 well, I guess now it’s “we” \u2014 look like dorks, I’m telling you, the fanny pack people were right. The fanny pack is the key to race weekend enlightenment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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If you regularly carry a handbag, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, dude, women figured that out forever ago. You just discovered the purse.” Which is true. To an extent. But I’m not new to bags. I like<\/em> bags. Ordering a different bag is how I ended up with this one. I’d probably own a Frank Clegg duffle if I had more money, and back when I still used Instagram, it took C\u00e9line several months to learn that a guy who doesn’t have “buy himself Frank Clegg” money doesn’t magically have “spend Marketplace motorcycle money on a bag for someone else” money.<\/p>\n

The real problem was, I hadn’t owned a fanny pack since I was a kid, and I mostly used them for hiking. The scratch-and-dent-sale daypack I bought off a friend may be showing its age, but it still works great, so why would I spend money on a new thing that would do the same thing as something I already owned? On the other hand, when a brand offers to throw a fanny pack in for free if you buy some stuff you already planned to buy, how can you say no?<\/p>\n

Do I endorse buying this specific fanny pack?\u00a0I don’t know. It works great for its newly discovered purpose, seems well-constructed, and I can’t imagine I’ll need to replace it for at least another decade, if not two. But I also don’t know the fanny pack market well enough to say this specific bag is the best one overall or even the best one for you. But a fanny pack generally?\u00a0You absolutely need one of those.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t like keeping things I don’t use. That’s normal enough, or at least I’d like to think so. Anyway, I recently ended up with a fanny pack for mostly irrelevant new travel backpack reasons, and it seemed too nice to give away, but I had no idea what I would use it for since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,247],"class_list":["post-1956334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-jalopnik-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1956334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1956334\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1956334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1956334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1956334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}