Flipped Out | A FlipBelt Gear Review
How many times have you ran while holding your car keys or your energy gel? As triathletes, it’s fair to assume that most of us don’t / can’t running without the following in tow :
- Cash
- Car Keys
- Mp3 Player
- GPS Watch
- Energy Gel
- Rocks
- Your supercalifragilistic must-have accessory
In short, you carry A LOT of stuff. The next question is, where the hell to you put all of it?
image from flipbelt.com
One of the biggest things that we hate when we run are the sound of your car keys and your gadget(s) (select one from above), wriggling around in your pocket. Hey, we’re triathletes and everything’s supposed to be TIGHT… right? If it’s loose, it’s not aerodynamic!
Enter the FlipBelt
Our friends from Atleta Ako, distributor of the FlipBelt, gave us a sample of their best selling product to try and “punish”. Perfect timing as we’re starting to get our training groove back.
At Php 1,500 a pop, it’s clearly quite on the expensive side. But is it worth it? Let’s see.
On our first trial run, we stashed the following inside :
- Car keys
- Cellphone
- Pocket Wifi (Hey, being connected 24/7 is part of the job) =)
- 2 Energy Gels
From the very first step, we went from “nah, I don’t need this” to “FREEDOM!!”. For the whole duration of the run, everything stayed tight (and intact). Our pockets stayed empty, there was no bouncing and wriggling around, and we were able to just focus on our run.
The best part is, should you need any of your stashed accessories, it’s very easy to pull out from the FlipBelt. Which is a must for us as we often go from focused pace into “oh, I need to take a picture” mode very quickly!
In the beginning though, we couldn’t help but check if our gadget is still inside. The FlipBelt has no zippers so we were scared that something might fall out. After further research, we found that the trick is to flip (duh) or turn the belt inside out which locks everything in place. Cool huh?
We also loved the fact that it’s made of a very soft and very stretchable fabric so chafing won’t be an issue. We haven’t tried it yet for runs longer than 2 hours but we can pretty much guarantee that it’ll perform just the same.
All in all, we’re very happy with it. Our only concern is that you’ll have to get the sizing right. Since it’s entirely made of stretchable fabric, there’s no way to tighten it. We also don’t know if it has the tendency to become loose due to overuse or when you start to loose weight. So you might want to buy one 1 size smaller than your usual.
VERDICT
FlipBelt is available in all leading sports shops and at www.atletaako.com.
Get it.
