Category Archives: Reviews

Trainer

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Now that the winter is in full effect (OK maybe not so full, but it’s still a little cold), Eyegirl and I needed a solution for keeping up with our exercise when our 15 layers of thermal running gear are in the laundry or we’re too lazy to put them all on. (Often the case, or like me in particular – foot irritated from too much running on the treadmill – more on that later.)

The solution? An indoor bike trainer! (In fact, we got one for each of us.) At first I was concerned that a trainer would be A) too loud and/or B) not challenging enough for a tough workout.

I picked up the TravelTrac Mag+ trainer from Performance Bike after harassing the employees with my questions for too long.

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It was relatively easy to set up, and I was happy to find that both of these concerns were unwarranted. Plenty of Internet reviews talk about the noise level of trainers and the TravelTrac Mag+ is of course not magically silent. We need to turn up the volume to watch TV while riding, but the most important test is passed with flying colors: One of us can sleep while the other is riding in another room with the door closed.

Regarding the resistance level, those worries were also (way) unfounded. The Mag+ offers 5 resistance levels in addition to the bike’s own inherent gears. With my bike in a relatively high gear, resistance levels 2 and 3 are plenty challenging. I think I have ventured to 4 on one occasion and I don’t think I have even tried level 5. So, there is plenty of room to improve!

For Eyegirl, I accidentally ordered the TravelTrac Fluid model, not realizing I had selected a different one online. More thorough review of that model will come later.

Anyhow, we are quite happy with the trainers so far. Are you having success with your winter exercise?

Under Armour Base Layer

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Now that it’s getting colder, there seem to be less photogenic things to post while we’re out running or cycling. It’s dark in the morning before work, and it’s dark at 5:00 pm. But one thing that has been helpful in making the temperature more bearable has been the new Under Armour Cold Gear base layer shirt I recently bought.

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These shirts run tight, I think it even said so on the tag or store display, so I picked XXL although lately XL has usually been sufficient in other shirts (as opposed to 3XL in the past!).
It has been handy for cold weather running, or under my cycling jersey with additional layers depending on how cold it is. So far we have only been challenged with temperatures as low as 35-39 F, at least that we’ve tried to exercise outdoors in. It has kept me quite warm, now with the limiting factor being hands and feet!

Another nice feature of the shirt is the rubbery strip at the waist, which helps to hold it in place by gripping your pants/shorts.

The next step will be to invest in some gloves and footwear, most likely based on the excellent reviews of the All Seasons Cyclist!

Hope your cold weather endeavors are going well!

Black Diamond Spot Headlamp

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As we mentioned before, the MapMyRun.com suite of programs for logging your fitness activities can be handy and motivating. In particular, their challenges and prizes can be a good source of motivation to do something you wouldn’t normally do.

The first challenge I entered on the site was to run 30 miles in 30 days. Lately, we might not consider that to be too difficult, but earlier in our running program, it was a fair number of miles and meant we should do about 3 miles at least 10 times throughout the month.

We thought we could pull it off, and we did! We received a nice E-mail with a cartoon trophy saying congratulations:

But later, I received an E-mail saying we had won a prize. I assumed it was spam and ignored it for a week or two. But, I did enter the challenge, I remembered. Maybe it was real?

I opened up the website and navigated to the Challenges page to look at the prize list (too suspicious to click anything in the E-mail) – sure enough, there was my first name and last initial, with the prize “Black Diamond Spot Headlamp”. I figured it must be safe to write back with my address, and the headlamp arrived in the mail a few days later.

I thought it was silly at first and even told one of my friends I had no idea what to do with it. But, as the year went on, I found it to be handy for running/cycling in the morning when it’s dark, or even moving boxes into the attic!

I recently bought a cheap light for my bike at a local shop and was disappointed to find that going over bumps in the road caused it to flicker and lose intensity. Putting on the headlamp instead, although it might look silly, worked really well and has the benefit of being able to aim on the move. The other day, I even took it out for a run in the rain and it held up great!

We also use a number of Black Diamond products for climbing and we should review them later also. (Always delinquent with the climbing updates!)

So, although I was initially skeptical about the utility of the Black Diamond Spot Headlamp, they’ve made me into an official headlamp convert, especially now that the daylight hours are getting shorter!

Are you a headlamp user?

Edit: I forgot to mention, it has two settings, one click turns on the general background light, while a second click turns on an additional center spotlight and increases the overall brightness. It can be positioned a multiple angles relative to horizontal and even while running/bouncing around, I have not had it accidentally shift out of the position I set it in.