First, some housekeeping. I finally bought my own URL so update Google Readers and such to www.pickyandhealthy.com.
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As you saw on my Christmas recap I received a bunch of gifts that are directly related to fitness. Because of that I thought I’d do a little review here.
First, the Spibelt
When this arrived it was definitely smaller than I had expected. I thought how will it fit my Blackberry, keys, money, and ID, like the website claimed? But by some miracle it does. However, I don’t think I could fit my camera in there as well, but you know I’ll try!
Here’s how it looks empty, next to my BB for comparison
And here it is with my BB inside
There’s still a lot of room to stack things on top of the Blackberry, but I think to fit something like my camera it would need to lie flush to my body and that wouldn’t work. But I think some money, my ID, Gu packs or other such things would easily fit and work.
I’ve worn this for 2 runs now and I really like it. I can’t tell the difference between running with it and running without it. The first time I had my camera and ID in it and the second my BB and ID. There’s no bouncing or movement at all. That said I am wearing it under some layers since it’s winter here so I guess to really get a feel I’ll have to wear it like a fanny pack with nothing else holding it down to get a real feel.
Second, Sennheiser PMX80 Headphones
I have the Sennheiser CX400 earphones that I use every day and for working out, but with a lot of movement (and a lot of sweat) they slip out of my ears a lot which leads to aggravation on runs and at the gym.
After some research I decided to get the PMX80′s and so far I really like them. The bright orange is a little much, but the sound quality is great. And because they wrap around my head I don’t need to worry about them falling out of my ears.
Two issues. First, with my hat on they didn’t fit over my ears so they were a little loose. Second, the cord is REALLY LONG so I tucked it into my shirt. With layers this was fine (although there was some pulling), but I think this could get annoying.
Positive: they’re much easier to pull on and off than the earbuds which was really helpful when I was out running on roads and wanted to take them off around curves so I could hear if there was a UPS truck speeding around and I needed to jump into a snow bank (not that that happened…).
Third, Garmin Forerunner 305
Enough people have this that I feel like I’m not going to add anything new to the discussion, but I still wanted to post anyway.
I really love this so far. It’s so nice to run and to be able to see how far I’m going (and how far I have left), my pace, and my heart rate. In training for my half marathon my goal is to run 10 minute miles and after running with the Garmin I realized I have a difficult time going that slowly.
It’s so cool to know that when I ran on Saturday I went 3.08 miles in 29:44, at an average pace of 9:38, I burnt 396 calories, and my max heartrate was 181!
And today I went 3.10 miles, in 29:47, at an average pace of 9:37, burnt 396 calories, and had an average heartrate of 181!
I think it’s going to be super helpful with my half marathon training.
