All of this week I will be sharing some tips on Winter Running Apparel, with some strategies on how to keep yourself warm, safe and comfortable in cold and dark running conditions. Today is the 6th of 6 videos, with strategies on how to stay safe when running in the dark.
Hello. This is Blaine Moore from RunToWin.com and I’m going to show you a few things about winter running apparel so that you can go out and be prepared for the colder weather as it comes in.
Your Visibility
One problem with running in the colder weather is, it tends to be darker earlier and get lighter later in the morning. So you are going to want to make sure that you are visible. Like right here, these are not good clothes to be wearing if you are going to be running in the evening or in the early morning. This is only good if you are running in a lot of light.
There are a lot of good options for wearing things that are reflective. Like this jacket here from Nike has a lot of reflective strips on it. It’s very visible, a very obnoxious color. So even in the middle of the day, it’s a good one to wear, especially if it’s foggy out or snowing. People are more likely to see you.
As much as you can wear that is reflective, the better. A lot of tights and pants that you get these days have reflective designs and that’s not quite as important because realistically if a car’s coming at you, they’re probably not going to see your lower body no matter how reflective it is. So really concentrate on getting your head and your torso especially to be as reflective as possible.
Another option is to wear lights. So this is a cheap bike lamp that I got. It’s just a tail light for a bike. There’s a couple of options for that. I can wear on my arm as I’m running. It also comes off the strap and you can just clip it right on to the back of your pants. And that’s very good for grabbing attention.
You’re definitely going to want to get a headlamp. Not just so that you can see but also so that you can be seen. You can wear one headlamp on your head and in conditions especially when it’s foggy or if it’s raining and you have the light reflecting off of the water droplets right in front of your face you might want to wear another headlamp on your waist. If you have a tri-belt they’re really easy to attach to the tri-belts and they are easy to put on and off. Otherwise as long as your strap is big enough you can just step right into it and put it right around your waist.
A lot of times what I’ll do is I’ll take my light, and even if I don’t need it to see, I’ll adjust it so that it’s got an obnoxious blinking. And that’s very visible to traffic so that they can see me coming like quarter mile away. They may not know what you are but they know that you are there. That’s the important thing.
If you don’t have one then it’s certainly worth picking up a reflective vest. You can throw this over anything you’re wearing, no matter what time of the year. And these are always very visible, very reflective, that’s the whole point of wearing them. So I highly recommend getting something like that.
Recent Comments: