Gear Adjustments…

You can find just about any piece of gear you would want for running either at your local store or online. Much of it is very useful and worth the investment. I mentioned in a past post that you may also be able to use items from your home in place of buying a piece of gear. For example, right before I tossed our digital camera case into a donation box, I realized that its size and shape was perfect to use a running wallet.

I tend to run very warm. This can make winter running tricky, as I want to be layered enough to get and stay warm, but not so layered that I’m soaked like I’m running on a Florida beach at midday in July. There are ways to handle this, including carrying multiple Buffs or similar headwraps so I can switch them out, or using my zippered jacket so I can adjust the zipper height during the run to allow more or less air in.

One of the trickier areas to manage is my hands. It’s not a big deal if they get overly hot and sweaty, but they are one part of my body that tend to be either very warm, or uncomfortably cold. At a recent race, I was given a couple of pairs of cheap cotton running gloves and in the interest of keeping my hands more comfortable for winter running, I decided to experiment with them.

Fingerless gloves are well-known and popular but using these wouldn’t help with keeping my hands at a moderate temperature during a run, as it’s my fingers and backs of my hands that get cold. So how about palmless gloves? I took the gloves and a pair of scissors, cut out the palms, and tried them out.

Getting them on took an extra moments as you need to put each finger in individually since they’re not being forced into a confined space. Not a deal-breaker and once they were on, this solution worked beautifully.

The temperature when I tried this method was around 25 F. During the first mile or so, I could tell that more cool air was getting onto my hands, even though they were in a ball. Further into the run, my hands were warm but definitely not hot and sweaty so the overall feeling was more pleasant. While I don’t think we lose substantial amounts of water by sweating through our hands like we do through our head or other areas, we do lose some and thus a positive side benefit of the palmless gloves is less sweat.

Some running gloves are quite expensive ($20 or more) and I would be reluctant to cut out the palms on those. But, for cheap gloves that I would use for everyday running, having the palms out is an excellent option.

There may be other ways to experiment with gear and short of destroying an expensive piece of it, it’s fun to tinker with what you have to make it work better for you.