Gear Guide issue 25

Buy everything you need to prepare you for the trails this summer. Our gear guide features bars, hydration, tops, shorts, tights, accessories and shoes shoes shoes!

TRAIL

28 Sep, 2017

Prepare for long hot days on beaches, mountains, and singletrack with the TRAIL 25 gear guide! Aside from training, the best preparation you can do is to ensure you have the right gear and nutrition for your adventures.

Nutrition

Superbar I Am Training 45g R19/R498
Pekant Granola Bar 35g R15/R250
Pekant Protein Bar 65g R25/R350
TREK Protein Energy Chunks R36
Trailnuggets Peanut Butter Coco Apocalypse 60g R38/R456

Bar Advice

Looking for a sports bar? It’s a good idea to test one or two before buying a box of them.

Test them during a few training runs. Things to ask: How easy is it to bite, chew, and swallow? In cold weather, how easy is it to bite a piece off? In your pocket, does it fl ake into many small pieces in its wrapper, or does it keep its integrity? What does the fourth one in a row taste like – too sweet, or still pleasant?

What ingredients does it have? Are there additives that you don’t know the name of, with numbers preceded by an E*? Try staying away from these. Generally the fewer and closer they are to their natural state, the better. (*Over 300 of these.)

Hydration

Almond Creamery Nut Milk 20ml/1L R29/R72
Enduren Recover 850g R260

Drink Smart

You’ve just trained hard and smart, and you feel great! But from experience, euphoria can only fuel you for so long. It’s time to think of smart recovery.

Drinks like smoothies are brilliant to give you a wide range of phytonutrients, and the particle sizes, which are smaller than you can chew, mean there’s less digestive work for your body to extract nutrients. But making them takes time, and some effort, which doesn’t make them popular with some people. For those individuals, it makes sense to get a pre-mixed or ready-to-drink top-up.

As with bars, flavour is important. Most people don’t like drinking something that doesn’t taste good, except for a minority who will drink something purely because it’s good for them.

Next: is it easy to mix? Does it need just water, or a milk of some kind? It’s much easier logistically if it needs just water, or if it’s already mixed. Similar to food bars, what ingredients make it up?

Are there a few healthy constituents, or is there a long list of substances that read like a medicine description? Keep the list short and close to nature when making buying choices.