Gear Reviews That Don’t Suck: DC Rainmaker

I decided it’s time to get a new GPS watch, as my foray into cheapies was pretty disastrous. It’s a big investment to drop a couple hundred bucks on a watch, so I like to do my homework before I plunk down my coin. While the Interwebz is full of useful info, it’s also full of a lot of crap. So, when I come across useful info, I like to share it.

Last night I found DC Rainmaker’s website and boy was I blown away. The dude does his homework, and shares all the information. And I do mean “all.” While I could do without the blow-by-blow photo sequence of how a particular watch unboxes, his reviews are methodical, detailed, and imaged to provide as much information as possible about the item in question.

I think it’s safe to say he’s a techie. According to his blog, he owns five smartphones, just so he can test out any fitness app he desires. Wow. Anyway, if you’re looking at a new running watch, check out the link above. I guarantee you’ll get as much info as you can process. While I think my reviews definitely Don’t Suck, DC Rainmaker might just be the Original Gangster of Gear Reviews…

Less From Your Shoes, More From Your Feet

Reblogged from an athlete's body:

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There has been a lot of interest lately in the transition to minimal footwear. Am I going to get hurt? How long does this transition take? Is this really better for me? Will my old shoes take it personally? Last year at this time, there were 6 minimal shoes on the market. This year there are 64. It’s a hot market, and folks are taking notice.

Read more… 1,304 more words

When it comes to running biomechanics, I'd say Jay Dicharry is an expert. I almost figured out how to get my healthcare to pay for a session at the SPEED Institute, but didn't get it done before I moved to AK. If you've asked yourself, "Am I ready to run in minimal shoes?" then this is a great way to test yourself out. If you're that guy who decided an overnight switch to Vibrams was exactly what you needed, enjoy this article from the couch while you enjoy your stress fractures.

Gear Reviews That Don’t Suck: Pearl Izumi Fly Softshell Jacket

Approved.

I’ve been looking for a decent cold weather running jacket for several years. But, it just never made much sense to buy anything more robust than a light wind jacket when my coldest runs in SC and AZ might have approached a frigid 32F. Sure, the occasional winter excursions back to northern MN might mean some chilly jogs, but if I had 99 problems, a good running jacket wasn’t one.

Alaska, on the other hand, has been a much different story. Running in the winter up here is quite obviously legit. Last year, I made things work with my old wind jacket and a Patagonia jacket I got on sale at REI. Nothing was ideal, but it was better than nothing. Both jackets breathed very poorly, which led to a lot of frost buildup on the insides of the jacket, the fit for both is a bit wonky, but they worked so long as I layered appropriately. I made it through a winter of running, didn’t freeze off anything.

This winter, I was lucky enough to get my hands on the beauty you see above, in red. MSRP is $165 but sometimes you can find markdowns at the end of winter on Roadrunner or Runner’s Warehouse. Pearl Izumi is a company better-known for their cycling apparel, but they also have a line of running clothing. Their outwear is pretty much sport-independent; items like jackets are designed to apply to cycling, running, and pretty much any other cold weather athletic pursuit.

As I write more of these gear reviews, I’m realizing that in order to keep up with the other cool kids out there, I should start structuring these things more predictably. Someday I’ll get on top of that. Until then, you’re stuck with my scattershot approach. Oh well. There are plenty of reviewers that judge gear based on a single run, or a watch’s appearance for crying out loud; I can guarantee that what I tell you is backed up by my basic approach:

1) Nothing gets a review without roughly 100 miles worth of use. Shoes, jackets, shorts, whatever. When I say it’s been tested, it’s been tested.

2) I have no sponsors, unless you include your and my tax dollars. So, nothing I push or bash is based on a relationship with a corporate entity.

3) No nonsense, no bull. Take it or leave it.

So, here’s what I think about the jacket.

Bottom Line Up Front: Hands-down, best high-aerobic activity technical jacket I’ve ever worn, and it just so happens to be affordable.

1) The breathability of this jacket is simply outstanding. I simply have no tolerance for running jackets that don’t breathe, and you’d be surprised at the number of supposedly high-tech, expensive jackets that don’t breathe. The purpose of a running jacket is two fold – for one, it keeps the outside stuff out. Rain, snow, wind: a running jacket should keep all that nasty stuff off you. The other purpose is to move what’s inside, to the outside…namely, the perspiration your body creates. A running jacket that doesn’t do both doesn’t belong in your closet. I ran in everything from -20F to the high 20s, in hard winds, to driving snow. I am convinced that there isn’t a hardshell on the planet that can compete with a softshell when it comes to breathability, and this softshell in particular performed better than any other jacket I’ve tried. My breathability test is simple – run in the cold for a while, then stop. If I can see steam rising from the jacket, it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. Manufacturers want to throw numbers around, but they rarely mean squat outside the lab. This jacket steamed, and it steamed good.

I have another test for breathability: as soon as I finish a run, I strip off the jacket and look for signs of heavy condensation buildup. Are my forearms soaking? If it’s near zero, can I find large frost buildups inside the jacket? My experience is that most jackets struggle with the forearm sweat issue – the Fly solves this varying material density. The dense stuff is where you need it, the places most likely to be affected by cold wind. The chest, shoulders, and fronts of the arms are a nice, tightly-weaved windblocking material while the rest is more of a jersey-knit, allowing for greater breathability. Even so, I still found some condensation frost inside the jacket after a cold run. Just a touch in the forearms, and some in the lower back.

Now, I will say that in cold, wet regions, a hardshell would be more advantageous to keep heavy rain off you. I did not run in the rain in the Fly – but it’s billed as “water-resistant,” which means it probably won’t do much beyond a light drizzle.

2) Fit – A running jacket has to walk a fine line between too loose and too tight. Too loose, and excess material flaps around; more importantly, the jacket is too far away from the heat of your body to push your perspiration outside the jacket. Remember my basic maxim of cold-weather running: you are the heat source. Everything else serves to insulate and evaporate. Conversely, a jacket fit too tightly is constrictive, uncomfortable, and leaves your skin too close to the fabric blocking the wind, snow, etc.

That being said, the manufacturer describes the Fly as “semi form-fitting,” and I found that to be accurate. The drop-tail hem design, a nod to muddy/wet feet and rear bicycle tires, is appropriately loose, but the rest is *just* the right balance between tight and loose. I have large shoulders, and very un-runner-esque arms and chest for the time being, and I found the jacket to be perfectly comfy for running. Galen Rupp might have something else to say, but this stocky runner found that it fit as needed.

Other high points of the jacket include the hi-vis reflective piping, which got high nods from sleepy mates driving past me in the cold, dark AK mornings. Storm flaps on zippers and pit-zips are de-rigeur these days for any performance jacket, so nothing special there. If I had one complaint about the jacket, it was the internal fist mitts in the sleeves, which I found too short to be of any use to anyone without child-like appendages.

So, there you go. The jacket is priced competitively against other running softshells, but I’ve also noticed that when they go on sale, the discount is typically less steep that some of the other competitors. I’d recommend one, even at full price.

Strength for Endurance: Are Elites Starting Using HWT?

So, a friend of mine contacted me recently about starting up an HWT regimen. He was initially skeptical last year when I proposed HWT for endurance athletes, but had good success with plyometrics and body weight exercises when it came to staying injury-free (this is not the first anecdote I’ve received of athletes self-solving years of nagging injuries). It was a bit surprising to hear that he was interested in HWT, but he mentioned that he heard Steve Magness had worked with Alberto Salazar to improve Mo Farah’s/Galen Rupp’s strength through HWT, so I think that may have convinced him my ideas aren’t totally crackpot. Magness is a pretty progressive dude – I’m guessing that Salazar likes to hire coaches who are willing to push traditional boundaries like he does – and you can find his approach to strength here. To sum up, his approach to strength is very similar to what I talked about last year; it’s about improving muscle economy and recruitment through neuromuscular adaptation. It’s all about being more efficient late in the game. I did find a radio interview with Salazar where he briefly mentions Mo and Galen doing heavy squats, but no further info beyond that in terms of programming or anything. Interesting nonetheless to even hear that the Olympic gold/silver medallists might be doing some heavier weight work…

As for me, I’ve been experimenting with HWT now for about 6 months and I’m still pretty happy. I’ve modified my old routine a bit, though, to play around with some things. In order to work on my hip/thoracic spine mobility, I’ve reduced the weight and increased the depth of the squat. Some of you may remember I maxed out at 385 this summer. As you can see below, I’ve decreased the weight significantly to around 275.

I’m really trying to hit the max depth possible while maintaining a neutral spine, so I’m using a large medicine ball on a little box as a marker. It gets me past 90 degrees, to where my femurs are roughly parallel to the ground. I’d still like that T-spine to arch back a bit more, but I’m working on it. This depth is about right for me…I tried going lower, but felt like I’d need heel wedges to avoid arching the lumbar spine, which is not good form.

I’ve replaced the deadlifts with cleans in order to work on explosive power – more fast twitch recruitment. When I started this fall, I could consistently rep around 135. Yesterday, which was when I took this series of photos, I managed to do a set of four at 185.

I’m not happy with my legs in the sequence above – ideally I shouldn’t have to pop out to that wider stance to get underneath the weight. But using HWT, I have seen signifcant gains. I can rep 6 cleans at 165 now, with great form, no problem. My goal is to be able to do six reps at 185 with rock solid form.

I’ve tweaked the bench as well. I’m back to doing one-armed presses on the Bosu Ball, final sets are capping out at 5 @ 100lb dumbell.

What I love about this vs. the bench is that the core is destabilized by using only one arm while balancing on the Bosu. So I get to work my chest while working proprioreception and core stabilization, all at the same time. I’d recommend this approach for any time-constrained athlete as a means of getting more bang for your buck. I firmly believe that working independent, destabilized movements is one of the keys to building a level of strength, coordination, and proprioreception that benefits endurance.

Right now, I’d say I’m in decent shape, nothing stellar. Last week I did one day where I ran 10 in the AM and 10 in the PM, in some awful conditions – took me 1:25+ both ways. But I was pleased to note that I had no residual soreness, which I attribute to my level of strength conditioning. It didn’t put me entirely in the hurt locker, but I did notice that I was ravenously hungry for the next couple of days. I’m doing a bunch of backcountry skiiing and boarding, as well as the occasional skate ski, so I’m getting a decent amount of cardiovascular work under my belt. As always, it’s a constant give and take with work schedules and other the other fun things I like to do.

Gear Reviews That Don’t Suck: Arc’teryx Eon SLW

I’m not sure when I got my first “technical” shirt. Probably sometime in college, although, at USAFA we were issued sweet cotton throwback shorts and tees as our mandatory PT gear. No, I probably bought something on my own at some point after realizing that synthetic fibers tended to breathe and dry faster than the old cotton tee. I’m not sure, but my dresser tells you need to know about how I have dressed over the past decade of running. More shorty shorts than you can toss a stick at and scads of technical shirts. Race shirts, specialty shirts, tank tops, tee shirts, long sleeve, crew-zipped, mock turtle – you name it, I probably have it.

What I did not have until this past year was anything that wasn’t born in a lab. What do I mean? Synthetic fibers are just that – man-made. Most tech shirts these days are a blend of some kind polypropylene base and something stretchy. So, your average tech shirt is pretty much plastic.

In the past few years, natural fibers have made a comeback in the sporting apparel industry. For one, and not to be cynical, but companies recognize “green” is a market from which there is money to be made. Natural fibers can be far more green due to the low(er) carbon footprint needed to produce the material (got sheep and some scissors?). Secondly, natural fibers tend to be more durable. Thirdly, companies like Ibex and Icebreaker have figured out how to engineer technical apparel using natural fibers like Merino Wool. In short, this ain’t your granddaddy’s pair of heavy wool pants/lederhosen. The clothing being produced is uber-high quality and looks no different from your favorite pair of running tights or best zip-up running top. Finally, Merino wool has natural antibacterial qualities, which has obvious advantages when it comes to clothes in which one might run.

So, how did I test this shirt? Well, in many ways, when it comes to running, a shirt is a shirt is a shirt, right? Not much different from one to the next in terms of design. It does feature flatlock stitching, which is important to avoid chafing when you wear a pack, but less important for runners. But really, the most important thing to test with a shirt is the material. In this case, I was most interested in both the breathability and odor-resistant properties of the Merino Wool.

Breathability – it’s important to note here that the thickness of the fabric in question is a key aspect, and you should toss out the idea that wool garments are heavy, thick, and cumbersome. Merino wool allows designers to things with wool, like thin out the material without losing durability. The Arc-teryx shirt is pretty thin – think of your favorite tech shirt, how thick that is, and that’s about the thickness you’ve got here. I layered it under a jacket in AK, and wore it solo on runs in CA and it did well in either case. Merino wool fibers wick naturally, as they are hydrophilic at one end and hydrophobic on the the other; when worn next to skin, the shirt literally wants to move perspiration away from your skin, keeping you more dry.

Odor-resistance – I wore this shirt for two weeks straight without washing it, for every workout. Towards the end, I even wore it throughout a day of skydiving just to see if I could overwhelm it with a bunch of weirdness. Nothing, which is more than impressive. Try that with a synthetic shirt and you’ll be divorced/the Smelly Guy at the Gym before you can say “The Future is in Plastics!” So here’s the deal, folks – I pushed several pounds worth of sweat and corresponding funk through this shirt over two weeks without washing, and it didn’t even flinch. When I say it smelled like nothing, I mean nothing. I couldn’t even pick up traces of my own deodorant. Now, I will say that the shirt, when wet with sweat, smells slightly “wooly,” but it beats the alternative, which is…smelling like nasty ass BO. Seriously, is there anything worse than running behind someone with out-of-control funk? Other than actually being that guy?

Bottom Line: Approved. Frankly, it better be, at $90 a pop. Like I’ve said in other reviews, I want what I pay for. This shirt delivers what I want from a base layer/performance tee.

 

Alaska Winters are Funny / Still Not Crossfitting

Two weeks ago, I was running in -20F weather. Last night, I ran home and it was 32F. For fellow Humanities majors, that’s a temperature variation of 52 degrees, and a serious concern for all of us living in igloos (seriously, how dumb do you have to be to think Alaskans live in igloos?). Last week, it got up to 47F. Dude, that’s shorts running weather. Anyway, I love it. This state keeps you guessing, on your toes, and engaged.

So, what else is up?

Before I left, I wrote a bit about Heavy Weight Training (HWT) Protocols for endurance. While downrange, I decided to run a little experiment on myself: Run a fraction of the volume I was doing at home (80M/wk down to about 25M/week), and replace that volume with HWT strength work. See what happens. If you recall, my idea about HWT is that it is the preferred strength training regimen for endurance athletes, as it leads to strength gains without associated weight gain (hypertrophy). There are secondary questions as to whether it benefits endurance through neuromuscular adaptation and recruitment, but I would view that as a distant second to the benefit of getting strong without getting big. So, here’s what I did:

Every other day, as my schedule allowed, I executed the following workout:

1) 4-6 sets of 4-6 x half squat @ 80-90% 1RM

2) 4-6 sets of 4-6 x bench @ 80-90% 1RM

3) 4-6 sets of 4-6 dead lift @ 80-90% 1RM

4) 4-6 sets of weighted pullups @ 80-90% 1RM

After three months of this, I saw no increase in weight. My Squat numbers went from 315lbs t0 365lbs. Bench went from 225 to 240. Dead lift went from 315 to 405. Not bad, considering I achieved all this by simply making better use of the muscle I have, as opposed to adding mass I don’t need. Scientific? Hardly. Trial and error? Absolutely. This confirmed to me that what I see as the primary benefit of HWT is indeed valid, even when I dropped 90% of the cardiovascular work I was doing and substituted strength. At the very least, it blew the idea that strength means mass, absolutely and firmly out of the water.

Also interesting – I found that when I came home and started bumping up the running to previous distances, I didn’t get the usual oh-my-legs soreness I normally get the first few weeks back into normal training rhythms. I’m not sure what’s going on there – anytime I’ve looked at HWT and endurance, nothing has covered secondary aspects like recovery aid, which might be exactly what I experienced.

So, in light of all this, I won’t be doing Crossfit anytime soon. I think it has utility as a bridge program to take traditionally weak endurance athletes and add some functional strength. But I see HWT as a “next level” of strength for those who are truly looking to make themselves elite endurance athletes. The biggest problem with Crossfit (besides how cultish it’s grown) is that it bills itself as a hypertrophic regimen, meaning it promises mass gain. Look at the athletes of the Crossfit Games – how many of those guys do you think are capable of running sub -3:00 for a marathon? Riding a 1:00 40k cycling time trial?  But they sure are good at crushing 12 minute workouts, which I suppose is their point. If you want to be good at something, be good at it, whether it’s checkers or seeing how quickly you can do 40 x power cleans. My point is that if you’re trying to PR in a marathon, win a trail stage race, cycle fast, summit Denali, then Crossfit is not the most efficient use of your time.

But feel free to prove me wrong, of course…

Moon Dust

It feels like it was yesterday, that hot August day in Afghanistan 11 years ago. I laced up my shoes and headed out of what eventually become known as Camp Cunningham, in honor of PJ Jason Cunningham, on Bagram Air Base. Made a right on Disney, and continued past the Task Force compound on my left, the abandoned Spanish area on my right, and finally the former UK compound I would occasionally use in the future for source meetings.

Back then, it was a single strand of barbed wire that formed the perimeter. The flightline road, like all roads on base, was unpaved, composed of what I thought was dirt. My run took me within stone’s throw of the barbed wire at several points along the way, not far from the local warlord Asil Khan’s outpost on the north end. Cautious about venturing anywhere unexploded ordinance might be found (which was pretty much everywhere back then), I continued on the dirt road, jogging underneath the continual haze and heat of my first of many hot days in Afghanistan.

Shortly after, I met the moon dust for the first time. Talcum-fine and sometimes a foot thick, it swallowed my foot, and hid rocks underneath. I recall stopping and marvelling at the phenomenon. It was if I was looking at a miniature crater on the moon, complete with fragmentation impacts around the main crater. I then continued on, my feet and shoes now filled with the silty remnants of a river long since dead.

If there is a common thread that runs throughout the hundreds of runs I conducted across Afghanistan and Iraq in eleven years, it is the moon dust. Thick across a million square miles of Middle Eastern and Central Asian territory, it is ever present, as patient as the tribal mind. Stirring with each footstep, vehicle movement, or breeze; it awaits the next major windstorm that will whip it into the upper atmosphere, then re-deposit it somewhere else.

Within your porous office keyboard, for example. Or maybe the creases of skin in the fold of your elbow. Or the notoriously difficult-to-maintain chamber of your M-4.

In Iraq, where you could still find paved roads untainted by decades of tank travel and explosives, it wasn’t so bad. On Balad, I could pretty much run on roads without ever having to worry about stepping though a couple of inches of dust only to find an ankle-punishing stone beneath. But then the winter would arrive, and with it, rain that turned the dust to a muddy-soul crushing and foot swallowing muck that seemed the perfect analogy to years of combat with no progress.

Through it all, I’ve run. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Places with names once the by-line for a million press releases, but now shuttered and memorable only to those of us who’ve been, and the occasional military historian dedicated to fighting our collective rearward myopia. LSA Anaconda. Balad Air Base. Camp Victory. Places with names that soon disappear as well. Camp Bastion. Kandahar Airfield.

Some places were more dangerous than others. In Baghdad, the kidnapping threat on-base was so high that I felt it only prudent to retreat to the treadmill in the gym. Most recently on Camp Bastion, one run took down the same road I would find myself on, a month later under vastly different conditions. Little did I know I would find myself running the opposite direction, in full combat kit, engaged in a six hour firefight to repel 15 insurgents who penetrated the wire.

But always, the dust. Forever, the dust!

Recently, I read Dexter Filkin’s outstanding book, Forever War, and was interested to find that he too, found running a way to connect with his environment as a combat journalist. His runs were a bit more ballsy, often through the same dangerous neighborhoods that would swallow his peers, and reveal them in jihadist videos. But the experiences, I realized, were more common than not. Temporal as the dusty footsteps we left behind, our combat runs were a means of reflection, or maybe a simple way to blow off steam after another trying day.

To say that I someday will miss running in Iraq and Afghanistan is an overstatement. But I do feel as if running in those places gave me perspective on my experiences, and that is valuable in and of itself.