Here’s hoping
Aug.01, 2008, filed under Miscellany
One of my training things is to run to the gym with my kit and have a session in the pool or of weights or both and then run home again. I also want to spend the winter hill-running (in an all-day, half-run, half-walk and a picnic kind of fashion) and have a morbid fear of getting into trouble and having to get mountain rescue out, only for them to discover that I’m under-equipped. How embarrassing would that be?
The problem is that what is required is an adventure-racing specific pack, and they just don’t make those for women. Girlie-bike packs are now easy to find. Camelback have a great range of packs that’ll carry about 2l of water and enough kit to see you fine all day on a mountain when you’re biking. But adventure racing? No one makes them.
I bought an OMM Running Light last year on the basis that the OMM team probably knew what they were doing and the lightly-loaded jump test in the shop made it a hands-down winner over the Inov8. However, sadly, when running I have discovered that the hipstrap slips up and the only way to keep the pack from jolting around is to tighten all the straps as tight as they go and have the hipstrap around the waist. To be fair the product manual says to put the hipstrap around the waist, but the whole point of packs like this is that they should sit on the hips. Tightening the strap around the waist affects the diaphragm and breathing capacity.
I have thus been using it for short runs but have been under-impressed, on the whole. This has pretty much been my experience when trying to buy running packs. They ride up and don’t sit properly and interfere with my breathing.
Trips to various specialist shops have revealed only that I have a moderately pronounced lumber curvature and a stupidly small waist for my size, which means my chances of getting something to sit where it’s supposed to when running are fairly slim.
Wiggle recently expanded their product range and I was delighted to discover that Salomon have been added to their suppliers. I have a friend who is an anthropologist and expert on Mongolian shamanism — and who also happens to have successfully completed the Marathon Des Sables. She recommended the Salomon Raid and told me that my best bet was just to bite the bullet, order one online and see if it worked.
Hence I have just placed an order for the Salomon Revo Raid. The black one, naturally. I’ll let you know how we get on.
And if this doesn’t work I’ll be looking for further recommendations.
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
