Trees Not Tees x Camino

Our story with TreesNotTees goes back to the Water Cooler over four years ago.

We met legend Russ Oliver - serial Entrepreneur for Good projects and all-time gorgeous human and he said 'Do you know Jim Mann?' At the time we 'did but we didn't - sure you have experienced that phenomenon - once explained of course you knew who Jim is - an abolsute rockstar in the endurance world - multiple winter Bob Graham/Dragons Back record holder. Well it turned out that Jim had gone in to the syrup making business. If we went down that rabbit-hole we would be lost forever.

So fast forward to 2020 and we are getting the first Camino event ready in the maelstrom of the pandemic and we are chatting to our forever friends ReRun. We are new and so we are flirting with the idea of merchandise - some tees. Charlotte says have you heard of TreesNotTees - they exist to give your runners an opportunity to 'Not choose another tee shirt'. This seemed like a wonderful idea.

There are some great podcasts out there where Jim explains that he is not against running tees. If you are running your first ever ultramarathon (which many of our Camino community find us that way) or have trained for years for an iconic running event and when you finish you can own a tee to remind you of that event then he is all for it. Where it doesn't work is when the majority of us are running the same half or marathon and the organisers are incentivised by the race organisers and their sponsors to shift another tee. In that situation having an option to 'Tick here to have a tree planted instead of your T-shirt' really is a beautiful option.

Last week we hosted our Epping Forest 50Km.