iFitness Hydration Belt vs. Camelbak

When I first started running I didn't ever really need to carry any water because I was usually running on the trail at Town Lake and could get water from the water jugs. As I started running farther and, not always on the trail, I found myself in the market for a hydration system.

There are usually 3 forms of hydration options: handheld, belt and backpack. 

The idea of "carrying" around water in my hand for the entire run sounded awful. I know some people don't mind them but I didn't see myself being one of those people. 

The next option was a hydration belt. When I first started running I had low back issues. I was worried that the belt would bother my back during my runs. Also, they all seemed to get bad reviews about bouncing up an down.

So, I went with the last option. A Camelbak backpack. Hi Friends!

I purchased the kids version of the Mini Mule at my local outdoors store. {I think my version is the 2009 model. This is the latest kids version on the market.} It can hold 50oz of water. I usually fill it half or 3/4 of the way up before a half marathon or long run.

Reasons why I like my Mini Mule Camelbak: 

1) Smaller=lighter 

2) It has both the chest strap and belt strap, which the smallest adult version doesn't have

3) It has lots of room for my keys, phone, gels, gloves, hat, arm sleeve etc. I have issues with over dressing and it's nice to have a place to put all of my stuff. 

4) Helps me avoid water stations during races

5) It's easy to drink from mid stride with the drinking tube

What I don't like about a Camelbak:

1) It gets really hot on my back when the temperature rises, which is basically year around in Austin.

2) My back and shoulders seem sore after long runs from the pack

3) Parts of the pack would rubbed my arms raw if I wore short sleeves. This also prevented me from wearing tank tops. 

4) It's a pain to take off the pack to get my phone or gels out mid race. This isn't a problem if I have a friend that can help out but when running alone it's a pain.

After lots of back sweat {tmi??}  and having sore shoulders after the Rock n' Roll Arizona race I started to consider getting a different system. After watching my Aunt run a half marathon with an iFitness Hydration Belt and asking Danica WAY too many questions about her review of belt I decided to order the 16oz option and give it a try.

Usually, I like to try things out a couple times before using it in a race. Not this time. I think I ran about 7 miles with the belt when I decided to use it for the Austin Half Marathon.

What I like about the iFitness Hydration belt:
1) It's easy to get to my gels with the convenient holders.
2) It's nice to have my iPhone easy to access for mid race photos.
3) There is the option to have your race number on the belt {even though I haven't used this option yet}
4) It doesn't bounce or move around, it's really shocking.

5) There are little toggles to keep the water bottles in place

6) There's a little divider/holder for my id and credit card

7) It doesn't make my back hot

Things I don't like as much:

1) Sometimes it's hard to get the water bottles out of their pouches

2) It's not as easy to drink from the bottle of water as the Camelbak tube

3) The water bottles leak a little if you don't have the lids on just right

4) I like to carry Sharkies as back up to my gel. There isn't really a good place to put them. I had to shove them into the pouch with my phone. The package is too big to fit in the other gel holster.

So, what does this all mean? Even though I've run lots of races with the Camelbak I think the iFitness Hydration Belt has won me over. The Camelbak is a great option for bike riding or running on the trail or when I anticipate shedding lots of layers but I think the iFitness Hydration Belt will be the key to my happiness in the Spring/Summer/Year-round. The iFitness Hydration Belt provides a convenient way to hydrate and refuel on the run without the shoulder pain and back sweat with the Camelbak. 

Kelly

P.S. I purchased both hydration systems with my own money but I'm not against getting free stuff. Also, the opinions in this post are my own. I wish I had been paid to write them but that's not the case.

Tuesday Things

Let's play catch up shall we? My friend Emily features a Tuesday Things, which I thought would be a perfect way to catch up on life. We've been super busy of late. Other than running another half marathon,  my life for the last month or so has consisted of:

1. Spending the weekend catching up with my college girlfriends.

2. Camping at the Guadalupe River State Park

Brandon wants you to see how cool his car looked with both bikes and kayak on it.

 

 Priorities people

 {don't judge the wine it was the only plastic bottle option}

3. We just won our bowling league, back-to-back champs. Yes, we are in a bowling league. We recently switched bowling alleys and killed it during our first week of play with a 814.

 

4. I recently downloaded Instagram and I'm now obsessed. I'm trying to participate in the March photo a day,  this was today on the running trail. Look for lots more Instagram in my life.

5. I have now moved into my "mid-late" twenties. I celebrated my 26th birthday on Friday. We spent the weekend in Tulsa helping out my Father-in-law, who had his knee replaced, but were able to squeeze in a wonderful birthday dinner, cupcakes and afternoon lattes.

The birthday celebration continued at our bowling league last night with bowling, balloons and cookies!

I'm officially getting old.

Kelly

2012 Austin Livestrong Half Marathon Recap

I'll be honest...I wasn't really excited about running this race. I hadn't trained very much since my last race and I had been feeling kinda blah.

So, let's start at the beginning shall we. I picked up my packet on Friday after work. I wanted to be able to sleep in and enjoy my Saturday at home and not worry about the expo. I'm so glad I did. We had a great day at home. I was able to rest up before going to our friend's show. Since I wasn't going to be in bed as early as I like on race night, I was glad I had Saturday to sleep in. We had intended on going to our neighborhood Italian market before the show started. Well, so did everyone else in the hood...we ended up eating some pizza and grabbing dessert at Whole Foods. {PS We are no longer going out to eat dinner. From now on we are just going to Whole Foods. We had 3 huge pieces of pizza to share, a bottle of water for me, a beer for Brandon and tiramisu to share for $13! Seriously, you can't beat that!}We had a great night at the show, I spent the evening chuggin' water in the bar and I was in bed by midnight!

The nice thing about living close to the State Capitol {the start line} is not having to get up at the crack of dawn. Alarm went off at 5:45. Out the door at 6:25. At the start line at 6:35. Race started at 7:00. 

This is where I'd usually show you a picture of my my outfit I picked out the day before. It was honestly a game day decision as I walked out the door. I had two options laid out the night before: long sleeve or short sleeve with arm sleeve things. I went with the long sleeve and I'm glad I did. It was the perfect weight.

 The other game day decision was: Camelback or iFitness hydration belt {I'll do a formal post on comparing these two soon} I went with the iFitness belt.

After Brandon dropped me off and I jogged a few blocks to the start. In the process, I tried to find a portopotty. Why can't this race ever have enough? I ended up going to the finish line and found a short line. I was back in my corral with a few minutes to spare.

Honestly, the rest of the race is kind of a blur. I like to think I was having a dance party in my head because of the sweet playlist I created. Some highlights  of the race were: 

- Seeing a guy in actual bare feet running, no shoes at all. 

- There was the awkward moment that I thought someone around me had pooped their pants

- Going downhill after WAY too much up hill

- Realizing I was staying fairly close to the 10:15 pace I had hoped to keep 

-Thinking about my Sister-in-law's Father losing his battle to cancer during mile 9, the Livestrong mile. 

- Having these terrible race photos taken.

- Realizing the huge hill at mile 12 at Enfield and Lamar will never get easier. But for the first time ever I ran the entire thing.

- The weather was PERFECT!

Overall, it was a great race. The hills are never easy in Austin and I didn't get a new PR but I did get a new Austin PR. Oh, and it was a Half Marathon miracle. I didn't have to stop and go to the bathroom!

2:15:05

I spent the rest of the day eating, napping, taking Max on a walk, computing, going to the grocery store and hating life when I decided that an ice bath was necessary post hills.

xoxo 

Kelly

P.S. All photos were taken by my iPhone. Except the race photo...I "borrowed" that one from Brightroom. Don't sue me.

Another Random Friday

In keeping up with the random Friday theme I started last week... Here are some random thoughts:

- I'm running another half marathon this weekend. Why? I don't know either. Other than it's here in Austin and I run it every year. Per usual, I don't plan to set the world on fire. Goal: Just don't die. I've had the worst sinus/allergies lately {i hate you central texas} so I'm just hoping I can breathe come Sunday morning.

- We ordered take out, drank wine, caught up on our TV shows and ate Hey Cupcakes for Valentine's Day. It was awesome. We never order take out so it felt like a special occasion. 

- I mentioned last week how "I'm famous". I had my 15 minutes of fame at the ripe old age of 13 or maybe 14....I don't remember... on Bug Juice Season 3: Brush Ranch Camps. Luckily, I found these gems on Youtube. 

Sorry all you get are these screen shots. I'm too lazy to edit the clips down to anything worth showing and I sound RIDICULOUS. Even though I was at camp all summer I wasn't really a main character and wasn't featured in the intro song. Feel free to watch the entire season here. Or don't I'd actually prefer if you didn't. Teenagers are dumb. But summer camp is awesome.

- I finally rejoined the world of being an iPhone owner and I'm even more in love than I was before.

That's all folks. 

Kelly

11 Random Facts

Per usual, I've been lacking any motivation to blog lately. Luckily, Danica gave me a reason to blog! She tagged me in The Random Eleven so of course I had to participate! I've tagged others below, so please feel free to play along. Who doesn't enjoy random facts about strangers?

The Random Eleven

The Rules:

• Post these rules
• You must post 11 random things about yourself
• Answer the questions set for you in their post
• Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer
• Go to their blog and tell them you’ve tagged them
• No stuff in the tagging section about you are tagged if you are reading this. You legitimately have to tag 11 people!

11 Random Facts About Me:

• I had never been to a lake or on a lake before I was in College. I had been on a boat, on the ocean, a time or two but never on a lake. Growing up in New Mexico = very few lakes.

• I was on a TV show called "Bug Juice." It was on the Disney channel back in the early days of reality TV. Kinda like the Real World, but with kids at summer camp. I'm kinda a big deal.

• I'm really bad with sharing, especially clothes. I blame it on being 1 of 4 kids.

• I think I could eat Mexican food everyday. My waistline thinks differently

• The first wedding I was "in" was my own. Never a bridesmaid only a bride. (I have since been a bridesmaid)

• I have a fear of cruise ships, even though I've never been on one. Reasons why I choose not to "cruise": 1) Pirates 2) Nasty viruses/ diseases 3) Titanic, hello they do sink 4) Crazy Italian captains that abandon ship 5) Having to talk to strangers at dinner 6) Sea sickness 7) Fear of being left behind on an excursion stop 8) Did I mention pirates? disease? sinking ships? yes.

• I never thought of myself as a big dog person until we got Maxwell. Now I'm a crazy dog lady that talks to her pet on a daily basis. "How was your day Max? Were you nice to the other dogs at Brandon's work?" etc.

• I don't understand how Tumblr works. At all.

• I wanted to be a nurse for like 2.5 seconds because of the fact they only have to work like 3 days and can go live some where awesome as a "travel nurse." Then I remembered how I'm not good with people and overall squeamish in hospitals, so it was out of the question.

• I don't like emails staying in my inbox at work. If they are still in the inbox, I need to complete something or follow up on something. My personal inbox is the opposite, it's a cluster. I rarely file, delete, archive or organize.

• I've fallen off a horse more times than I wish to share. Either I'm really bad at riding or I just have bad luck picking horses. I have a feeling it's the first one, since I was in beginning riding at summer camp for like 7 years. 

11 Questions from Chic Runner:

• What’s your favorite article of clothing? Can I say a genre of clothing? Then any color of cardigan in my closet. If I have to say one, can it be my wedding dress?
  
• Morning person or night owl? Neither? I don't like to get up but I also can't stay up very late anymore. I blame old age.
  
• How many glasses of water do you drink a day? Not enough.
  
• What is your biggest fear? Getting kidnapped or attacked while running or biking
  
• Starbucks or Coffee Bean? Starbucks. We only recently got a Coffee Bean.
  
• What was the best gift you’ve ever gotten? The earrings Brandon gave me as a wedding present.
  
• What is your favorite color? Purple. Obviously.
  
• Would you rather get a phone call every hour  from a stranger or not have a cell phone for a year? Call from a stranger, easy.
  
• MLB or NBA? NBA. Go Spurs Go.
  
• Do you use a daily planner? I have a moleskin planner I keep in my purse for personal stuff. At work, life revolves around my Google Calendar.
  
• What’s one thing on your ‘bucket list?’ Run a marathon. {This might get crossed off soon!!}

People I’m taggin’. Here are your random 11 questions.

• Valentine's Day: Love it or Hate it?
• Favorite place to shop?
• Social media outlet of choice: Twitter or Facebook or Other?
• iPhone, Blackberry, Driod,  or Other?
• Biggest fear: Sinking on a cruise ship or airplane crashing?
• Did you go to public school or private school growing up? 
• Coffee, tea, red bull, none of the above?
• Best Spring Break trip? 
• General bathing/showering: at night or morning or choose to go the dirty hippie route?
• Favorite boy band? NKOTB, Backstreet Boys, NSYNC or one of the others that don't matter?
• Dogs or cats?

Christin

Amy

Erin

Nina

Carolyn

Melissa

Emily

Jane

Christine

Jacklyn

Tricia

Have a great weekend! Obviously, my Friday is super busy at work:)


Kelly