Puny arms and all

There are only so many hours in the day, and I must confess I would much rather run 4 miles than spend 40 minutes at the gym doing bicep curls. As a result, I simply lack biceps. Think Popeye before he ate a can of spinach. Fortunately, the constant back-and-forth arm motion of running has made my arms lean rather than grandma-flabby, but their lack of bulk creates a major problem for me: that I can't just go into a running store and buy a regular iPhone armband and expect it to fit. I actually spent my first half-marathon with my left arm squeezed against my side to keep the armband from falling off.

Oh, and when I went into a running store in Doral to ask their advice on what armband to buy, the woman who waited on me frowned at my arms and suggested I take up some more strength training. Not exactly what I was hoping to hear.

I did find a cheap Nike iPhone armband at http://www.seejanerun.com/ that fits, but it lacks the features other armbands have. It's simply a black Spandex holder and there's no way to navigate the volume or channels while you're running, unless you take it off, make the change, and then stick it back in the holder. (Which is hard to do if you're going at a good clip--but necessary if you accidentally forgot to disable "Shake to Shuffle" or had unintentionally put a song on repeat.)

I am not a tiny person by any stretch of the imagination--I see runners out there who are much smaller than me, including their arms.  So what do you wear when you want to run with music? Fortunately it's still short sleeve weather around here and I have shirt fabric bulking up my arm span, but in a month or two, we'll be back to tank tops, and I'll have to run with my left arm in a weird position again if I don't find a solution soon!