I'm not a running skirt kind of gal. As someone who won't wear skirts in my daily life, you're surely not going to see me wearing one when I'm out running. Still, I can see where people might find them comfortable, and I'm all about people finding gear that works for them.

However, in my race packet I received a brochure for the Skirt Chaser 5K race series. Women who enter the race get a race skirt. The men get skirt chaser gear. (Don't worry. The website assures men that there will be NO PINK gear. Whew.) The women's start time is three minutes earlier than the men's.

The silhouette on the front, a woman in a sexy pose in a (very short) running skirt, speaks to the way the event is sexualizing women. The site says that they're "putting a sexy spin on a running classic." There's also a fashion show after the event, "all the way down to the skivvies," according to the brochure. It's annoying, and not only because of the heteronormative assumptions that underlie the race. Women who run are athletes, except at these races where they're suddenly sexual objects in skirts to be chased down.

As far as I'm concerned, it lays out a running skirt agenda. Perhaps it's one that was there before and I just missed it. I thought running skirts were just another option, another piece of technical gear that might make running more comfortable. Instead, it seems that running skirts are a way to stay feminine even while transgressing gender (gasp!) by being a real athlete.