Gear Check 02012018

As of today, the 1st of January 2018 this is the gear I use and prefer –

• Altra Escalante – Road, Love this shoe
• Altra Lone Peak – Trail, Best of what I’ve tried.
• Nathan Handheld – When I want a hand held, not so often these days.
• Flip Belt with Zipper – My primary carry for runs less than 90 minutes with one of the 10 oz Flip Belt water bottles.  Holds my phone, the water and a key comfortably.  And a gel or two if I really wanted to but I haven’t.
• Hydration Vest – Salomon Second Skin 12 – Love this vest, really love it.  It’s not perfect, I could make some changes to make it perfect for me but it’s probably as close as I’m going to get until I do try to make my own.
• Ultimate Direction FKT Vest – Love this vest but the Salomon has a better appearance and rides better over all.   But the FKT has better storage for me.
• Ultimate Direction Soft Flasks with Extended Nipples.  Primarily for the Salomon vest, it allows drinking without removing and replacing the flasks from the vest which is a PITA to do while running.
• Ultimate Direction and Nathan hard bottles for the FKT and as handhelds.
• Garmin Fenix 5X – King of watches
• ID – Road ID Elite+ so if I die on the trail it won’t take too long to ID the body.
• Stryd Foot Pod – Pace, distance, metrics
• Garmin Heart Sensor on Polar Belt – This is a curious combo in that the Garmin belts have a short life span, the Polar’s much longer.
• Scosche Rhythm+ – I have a wish/hate relationship with this thing.  When it works it’s great.  But it works rarely 100% of a run.   I’ll have ridiculously high HR’s at the start of a run, 20 beats higher than a sustained sprint and 50 beats higher than my warmup pace.  Then it evens out and reads accurately.  Until it doesn’t. I want to like it but so far it’s just not working out.
• Halo Headcaps – The ones with the rubber strip to channel sweat.  Seems to work for me.
• REI Light Base layers – Super soft comfy shirt when you need a long sleeve.
• Cold running – Underarmor Cold Gear tops.
• Vest: Patagonia running vest
• Rain Gear: Marmot PreCip rain jacket, Underarmor rain gear.
• Random T-Shirts – Just random tech shirts, typically in the $8 range.
• Random Shorts – Underarmor, Champion, Asic, just a odd collection of shorts.
• Tights – Underarmor baselayers and brooks running tights.
• Socks – Injini No Shows or Quarters.   Love these socks.