The Shock Absorber Ultimate Gym Bra was discussed by Rachel at fairweatherrunner and I in the pub the other week, as we’d both been asked to review it. ‘How the hell do you put the bloody thing on?’ (an issue Angela at Warriorwomen had also pondered on her blog) was our main topic of conversation.
This is a problem I have with all bras of this construction – the type that aren’t a crop top and have more than one clip to do up. Doing the clips up before putting it on, then pulling it over my head like a crop top, then kind of squidging myself into it is my usual solution to the conundrum. I am aware this is possibly the worst thing you can do to a sports bra.
Still, once you’re firmly ensconced in the bra, you’re going to be staying put. This is a solid, supportive bra and you’ll be comfortable running in it or working out at the gym. There’s even a handy hook on one of the cups to secure your MP3 player headphone cable. It looks good, too, although both I and Rachel thought the size came up slightly small.
The Shock Absorber Ultimate Gym Bra is available at House of Fraser for £35.
Yesterday I said that I was going to go for a trail run in my new New Balance Minimus Zero (there’s a couple of photos of them on yesterday’s blog. They’re pretty, go and look at them). I also said that I’d changed my mind because the snow and the rain would have made the field a bit yuk.
I still didn’t go to a field today (which is probably just as well as, according to the website that I’ve just looked at, they’re for pavement running, although the man who sent them to me said they were trail shoes), but I did go for a run in them. Only a short run though, as – as the name implies – they’re minimal shoes and New Balance advise that you build up wearing them. That’s my excuse for only doing a short run, anyway.
These shoes, as well as looking good, are comfy. Despite the bobbly Vibram soles (if you didn’t bother looking at the photos like I just told you to, go and look now as there’s also a photo of the blue and black bobbly sole), these didn’t feel ‘barefoot’ but they did encourage me to strike mid-sole and I felt like I was gliding along at high speed, even if my stats say otherwise.
Stats Pairs of new running shoes: 1 Run: .72 of a mile
I’ve obviously become a complete wuss since moving to Kent. In London, it’d have to be at least minus-something before I even slightly pondered wearing long sleeves. This morning, although it was 9 degrees, I put on long sleeves, my Hippsy, my touchscreen gloves and because the top I was wearing had a rather wide neck, my Buff.
I’d worn my Buff a few days ago on my bike. It’s great on a bike if you don’t like strangling yourself by doing your jacket right up, they keep the draught out perfectly. And if you don’t mind looking a bit of a div, you can pull it up over your nose to keep the chill off your mouth. You can even wear it on your head. In fact, there are so many ways to wear a Buff, when you buy one, they’ll send you a booklet and a DVD demonstrating all the different ways.
Today’s run was a 2.5 miler to see how unfit I was. It was also to make me feel slightly less bad about the scales showing me in the dreaded double figures for the first time ever. I had been expecting it – I haven’t exercised properly for weeks and I’ve been eating and drinking loads, the weight didn’t come on by accident. Still, marathon training and Janathon should sort that out. Won’t it?
Stats: Distance: 2.5 miles-ish Time: 30 minutes-ish Pace: Slow Walking breaks: 0 (yay) Long sleeve tops: 1 Hippsys: 1 Pairs of touchscreen gloves: 1 Buffs: 1 Too many pieces of clothing: 3 Digits on the scales: Double Music Courtney Love Knifeworld Mark Ronson Gay Dad Stornoway
Obviously, the best way to keep warm is to stay in bed, but if you’re hardcore like me, and do venture out into the early morning frost, then you’re going to need something more than a skimpy pair of Speedos.
It’s thick, warm and comfy as well as having that technical stuff that wicks the sweat away. It’s also skin-tight and therefore prone to riding up (as I found out when I sat down to put my socks on) but, hurrah for the Hippsy!
What’s a Hippsy? A Hippsy is an elasticated piece of cotton, similar to a boob-tube in appearance but you wear it round your waist to protect you from the cold when your top rides up, exposing bits you don’t want to expose.
It’s ideal if you need an extra layer of warmth but don’t want to bulk up with too many clothes.
My Canterbury base layer, long tights, Hippsy and touchscreen gloves were all I needed in this morning’s minus-whatever weather to keep me warm.
As you know, I recently went back to my old gym as I wasn’t making enough use of the gym in the town centre. One of the reasons I left my old gym was because customers had control over the music and could whack it up as loud as they wanted, which drowned out my own music on my iPod.
Now the stereo’s been moved into the office, customers can’t control the sound level themselves. But they can ask a member of staff to turn it up – and they do. The other day I almost gave up my workout early as the merging of my and their music was driving me mad.
I’m too shy to complain. I can moan, but I can’t make a complaint face to face. I used to have a friend that would complain about everything – she’d complain about the noise of the air conditioning in a hotel room, she’d complain about the table she was given in a restaurant. I wanted to die with embarrassment when I was with her when she was complaining, although secretly I admired her assertiveness.
So, when I got home, I emailed the gym and asked if they could keep the music at a reasonable level (I know, how pathetic of me). I also got on Twitter and asked for recommendation for headphones that totally cancelled outside noise out. A friend recommended these Sennheiser earphones,
so I bought them and they’re great. The sound is a lot deeper and richer than my previous earphones so I hear a lot more of the sound I want to hear, rather than outside sound that I don’t want to hear.
You already know I’m a massive fan of Sennheiser’s Thru the Gears Audiofuel collaboration, and now I’ve got some of their earphones to listen to it through. Sennheiser impress me. Well done, Sennheiser.
I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be wearing pastel. Nike said they were sending me their Nike Element Shield Max Jacket which comes in silver, so it was a bit of a surprise to open the package and find a mint green jacket (which was the Nike Vapor Windrunner Women’s Running Jacket that they’d sent by mistake). I’m really not a pastel person. But no one was looking, so I put it on and oh, actually, it looked great. It fits perfectly and is light and comfortable. It kept me warm and dry before the Great South Run, it keeps me warm and dry when I walk to the gym, it keeps me warm and dry when I cycle to and back from the station and the hood even stayed up on my pea-head when I cycled back one evening through the rain. Oh yes, I’m a fan of this jacket.
It’s definitely mint green though
and not yellow like it looks on their website (the website says it’s yellow, so either they do have a yellow one or they get yellow and green mixed up).
What you can’t see from the photos on the Nike website is the hand warmers in the sleeves.
The only thing missing is an inside pocket. I do like an inside pocket. It does have two zipped side pockets though, one of them includes another pocket for your MP3 player and a little hole to thread your headphones through.
If you need a running jacket, I’d definitely put this on your list for Santa.
Of course, I had to go and Google for the lyrics to that song and found out that for nearly forty-three years, I’ve been singing the wrong words (not that I sing it often, honest). I always thought it went something like:
Where did you get that hat
Where did you get that hat?
Isn’t it a lovely one
I’d like one like that
only to find out that it’s actually:
Where did you get that hat
Where did you get that tile?
Isn’t it a nobby one
And just the proper style
Which, although having impeccable rhyme and metre, doesn’t make much sense – to me, at least. If someone called my hat ‘nobby’, I’d think they were either saying I looked a bit of a dick (which, admittedly, isn’t beyond the realms of feasibility) or that my hat was in need of a JML de-bobbler.
Anyway, back to my hat. My hat is an iHat and it has speakers in it and a cable to plug into your phone or MP3 player. I took it for a trial run on a run this morning.
(Yes, I know I look like I’ve been caught on CCTV robbing the local offy.)
All was ok with my iHat at first. It was warm and comfy and I could hear the music over the noise of the traffic on the busy road I live on but it didn’t take long until the iHat started slipping down over my eyes and so I tried rolling the front up and that was okay for a bit but then it started slipping down again so I tried rolling it up again but it kept slipping down and so it’d be great for people who like wearing hats when they’re running (it did a great job at keeping my hair out of my eyes) but only if they haven’t got little pea-heads like mine.
The iHat is only £9.99 (at the time of writing) and has been updated since I received my one, as it now comes with handsfree capability with an integrated in-line microphone, volume control and selection button.
The iHat looks better on the girl in this video. Hard to believe, I know.
Onto my new gloves. I used to have some touchscreen gloves (I say ‘used to’ as the last time I saw them, they were languishing in a bin in a toilet in Plymouth two miles into the Great South Run. I was happy to dump them because they weren’t responsive and they weren’t warm enough when it got really cold. These new touchscreen gloves are incredibly responsive and they’re woolly and warm and also have the added bonus of looking like normal gloves.
These touchscreen gloves are only £3.99 at the moment and also come in pink (they didn’t have pink when I got mine, bah).
Paramount Zone don’t only sell hats and gloves though, oh no. They have tons of funky stuff on there, including loads of ideas for Christmas presents.
Winter is approaching, there’s snow upon the ground… Well, there isn’t, but I thought I’d buy myself some winter running kit and burst into a bit of Human League at the same time.
Zalando is a site I’d used before and knew that they sold reasonable kit at reasonable prices. A purple pair of running tights caught my eye and I thought to myself, am I brave enough to run in purple running tights? and thought yes – I am! and put them in the basket.
Continuing on the bright and bold theme, I then ordered a purple long-sleeved Nike running top and a dark pink short-sleeved Nike t-shirt and some pink Puma socks.
Because I’d used Zalando before, the website already had my address details and so checking out by PayPal was easy. Delivery was free with an expected delivery date of 3-5 days. I’d ordered on the Monday and my gear was delivered on the following Monday. According to the tracking thing, they’d tried to deliver it on Saturday but no-one was in – they didn’t leave a card though, so no idea if they did try to deliver or not.
Today I wanted to go for a run in my new running gear. Could I be brave enough to go out in such bright clothes and look like a running aubergine or would I wimp out and put some black clothes on?
I was brave.
(Excuse the unmade bed – the cat was on the bed and I didn’t want to disturb her.)
The tights were comfortable but needed to be higher on the waist. I like my running tights to hold my belly in and these were too low and I was worried that I’d be flashing my bum. The t-shirt was great, it’s long enough and stayed in place throughout the run.
I wore the Saucony shoes on Saturday’s run and the first mile was great, faster than I’ve run for months. Shame I walked the other three miles though. Today’s run was comfortable and I think I may even prefer these shoes to my beloved Asics.
When Shaun came home last night, I told him I’d been out running and because I’d been out running I needed some new running shoes because mine were a year old. He said I couldn’t have new shoes because a) yes, they may be a year old; but b) I’d only worn them once.
I decided on c) I wanted new shoes and I was going to get some anyway and so he said ok, I want some new shoes too, shall we go now? And so we drove 20 miles to the nearest Sweatshop and a man with nice legs gave me the latest Asics Cumulus but I didn’t really like them and so he brought me out some Asics Nimbus 13 to try on and said they were a bit more expensive and I had a flashback to 2007 when I bought my second ever pair of running shoes which were Asics Gel Nimbus VIII which were £100 but were the comfiest shoes ever and I tried on the Nimbus and they were as comfy as a cloud and I went on the treadmill and the man said I was a perfectly neutral runner and didn’t have the slightest hint of over-pronation and so these shoes were right for me and I said to him you’re going to tell me they’re £100 aren’t you? And he said um, they’re a bit more than £100 and so I tried on the other shoes he brought me which were Adidas and Nike but I didn’t like them and so I said ok, I’ll buy the expensive ones, how much are they? And he said £120 and I thought eek and I said I’ve got a 20% off voucher, can I use that? And he said yes and so I bought these very pretty but very expensive Asics Nimbus 13s.
And then the man brought Shaun some shoes to try on and he bought a pair of Mizunos and then told everyone on Facebook he’d bought a pair of Brooks until fairweatherrunner asked him which Brooks he’d bought and so to stop me outing him for getting the brand wrong he confessed they weren’t actually Brooks and then this morning LOOK WHAT THE POSTMAN DELIVERED TO ME!
These are the most beautiful running shoes I’ve ever seen and they are Nike Free 3s. They’re very light and I probably won’t wear them running but I will wear them down the gym and review them then.
Anyway, although I ran yesterday, because I am a girl, I wanted to try out my new shoes and so I went for a short run. All good Juneathon preparation, eh?
And, talking of Juneathon – if you haven’t signed up yet, get on with it, you slackers.
The Under Armour Cold Black T-shirt blurb says ‘black out the sun’ so I was going to wait until it was sunny to try it out but the first time in the last month I’ve done any exercise was in the gym and we don’t get much sun in there but today I was up nice and early and decided to go for a run and try out the t-shirt and the Under Armour Bra.
The Armour Bra has an appropriate name as it’s a sturdy piece of kit. Despite it’s sturdiness, it’s a good-looking bra and if you were one of those gym bunnies that like to prance around the gym in your bra then you’d be proud to show this one off.
Still, I’m not a gym bunny who prances around the gym in my bra and it got hidden under the Cold Black t-shirt.
I’m sorry Under Armour, I hate this t-shirt, it’s not for me at all. The neck is far too low cut (it didn’t even cover the top of the bra), scooped and baggy – I like a much closer fit in my t-shirts.
The feel of the t-shirt wasn’t right. It felt more like a smart casual top I’d wear in an office (if it didn’t have the logo and reflective strip on it), not like a running top at all.
The fit wasn’t right. I can’t describe how it wasn’t right – it just didn’t feel right.
What I did like though was the length, some running tops can be a bit short, this was just right.
As for the bra… Well, it may be pretty, but it chafed my shoulder and back to fuck and I’ve never had a sports bra chafe me before.
For a (far) more positive review of the t-shirt, visit fairweatherrunner’s blog – she loved it, runners come in all shapes and sizes, after all.
Shaun got a nice orange t-shirt from Under Armour, I’m going to steal that from him and wear that instead.
