The Vault Regulars

Thursday, March 25, 2010

New gear results

I tried some new gear out during our Wales weekend walk. I had 2 new pairs of boxer shorts. 1 pair of Icebreaker 200 boxers and 1 pair of Xbionic boxers.
The Icebreakers are Merino wool and the Xbionic are 90% polymide.
I wore the Icebreakers first and after a couple of hours i was getting some discomfort in the groin area. This did not improve all day.
At the end of the walk i was in some discomfort and when i got back to base i found that the seams had taken the skin off my groin and i was in a bit of pain. A hot shower and a liberal dose of dettol antiseptic cream and i hoped that it would improve enough for sundays walk.

On sunday i put the Xbionics on and found they were comfortable even on the problem area. After sundays tough walk, i was aware of the problem caused yesterday but it wasn't any worse and they felt very comfortable.
From now on the Icebreakers will be left in the drawer and i will be using xbionics.

Sheila and i both used the  short ultralight event gaiter from integral designs these worked very well. It was great not to struggle with the full length gaiters and having no zips was a pleasure. I don't know about anybody else but when i wear long gaiters, i feel i need a sit down for 5 minutes to recover from the effort of putting them on.

Both of our new shell garments, my Cloudveil koven and Sheila's Berghaus paclite worked faultlessly. Considering the rain, combined with the humidity in the forestry, we were impressed with the performances.

6 comments:

  1. Delighted of your views regarding pants I was turning my attention to this this week following the trek up Skiddaw on Saturday. I think about it everytime I go for a walk whilst I'm suffering but I've forgotten about it by the time I get home. Now I know where to start - cheers for that!

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  2. Glad to have helped.
    The Icebreakers have fairly big seams right across the groin area whereas the xbionic have no seams here at all.
    I am impressed all round with the xbionic's.
    I am sure that there are other good undies around like the one's from NZ silk or Decathlon’s Kalenji, but as i havn't tried these myself so i cannot give an opinion.
    I have also tried the Paramo's which have a seam across the groin area also, but it's a flat one. I found some irritation with these but not as bad as the Icebreaker's, I found the fit of the Paramo's was poor, they just didn't fit me too well at all,so i don't use them on walks now.

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  3. A personal question if I may - what size trousers do you normally wear and what size boxers fit you? I am a 34" waist so was looking at the L/XL Energizer. I am currently using HH Lifa boxers but fancy a change. The sizing chart on their website is a little confusing as it's splits S/M, L/XL and XXL into 3 separate groups within each size bracket which makes little sense to me - anyway, L/XL seems to be 33"-38" waist which would be what I need. Agree...?

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  4. I'm the same. 34". yes i too found it confusing at first. I buy the L/XL and they fit perfectly.
    They are my first choice undies.

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  5. My HH Lifa boxers are falling apart after the TMB so new undies are top priority. Xbionics it is. Thanks for answering a 'personal' question ;-)

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  6. Maz,
    No probs. Hope you like them.

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