Champion Running Clothes—Affordable, Comfortable & Effective!

Back in January, I featured a post on a great program sponsored by Champion—the Champion Innovation Lab. The Innovation Lab provides a group of real everyday runners some of their newest technical fabric running clothes to test out while training for the Walt Disney Marathon. Champion is genuinely interested in these runners' feedback and their likes and dislikes of the various clothing items. Champion values their input and actually uses the feedback in their product development. How awesome is that?!

Champion sent me some of the same items to test as well—shorts, track pants, and tops. All the clothing items are made from Champion's doubleDRY technical fabric. I'm happy to report that all the items meet the RunnerDude's test of approval. The long-sleeve shirt I tested was light-weight and perfect for layering. On one run, I wore the shirt as a base layer with a fleece outer layer on top. The shirt performed very well in wicking the sweat from by body through the shirt into the outer layer (too bad my fleece outer layer wasn't made of Champion doubleDRY). On another run (on a milder day) I used the top by itself and again, it did a great job of keeping me dry. The shorts and pants worked equally well. I liked that the shorts had a little length to them. I wasn't too sure about the pockets, but I ended up really liking them as well. I didn't really notice they were there, and they came in handy for my sports gel. The only thing that would have made the shorts even better would be if they came with a doubleDRY brief liner. I believe the track and vented versions of their running shorts come with liners, but the pair I tested did not.

Overall I was very pleased with the doubleDRY performance and the shorts, tops, and pants all get a 5 RunnerDudes rating! Add the affordability on top of the great performance and Champion running clothes are a great deal!

New Contest!!

I'm happy to announce that Champion is sponsoring the next RunnerDude Contest! The prize will be a clothing item from Champion's sports line! There will be two winners—one male and one female. To enter, all you have to do is email RunnerDude at runnerdudeblog@yahoo.com by midnight (EST) Saturday, March 13, 2010. The winner will be announced on the blog on Sunday, March 14, 2010. Be sure to put "Champion-[male or female]" in the subject line and your name in the body of the email. Please remember to include your sex (male/female) to make certain your email goes into the right category for the drawing.

Note: Champion provided the clothing items used in this review. I received no compensation for writing this review and I was not encouraged by Champion to do a positive review. This review is simply a recap of my experience with the product.

Move Over Performance Synthetics!

If you've been running as long as I have, you'll remember a time when all there was to run in was 100% cotton—shorts, T-shirts, oh and lets not forget the tube socks! The term "moisture-wicking" had not yet been created. Oh the lovely memories of shirts that felt like they weighed 5lbs heavier and stretched down to your knees from all the water the shirt retained after a run on a hot summer day. Not to mention the chafed nipples! OUCH!!! Oh and don't forget that your shoes felt a few pounds heavier (each foot) from all the sweat your cotton socks had collected.

The dawn of synthetic performance apparel was a godsend. But, nothing's perfect. Ever had a running shirt that after a season of running could stand on it's own from the reeking odor? PEE-YEW! No matter how many times you wash it, that odor just doesn't go away. There are new detergents that help kill the sports-related odor, but that's just an additional purchase and not a cheap one at that.

I've always read never to buy sports/performance clothing that's not made of synthetic materials such as polyester. So, I was a little skeptical when I came upon thriv—a new line of non-synthetic performance clothing.

Driven by the negative experiences of wearing traditional polyester-based athletic apparel (skin irritation, odor), the Andrews family decided it was time for a new fabric. Al Andrews, former Tulane student–athlete (All SEC '65 & '66) and apparel industry veteran charged his son Todd with finding a solution. He wanted the fabric to include the following properties: moisture wicking, anti–microbial, thermal regulation, UV protection, and comfort—a pretty tall order.

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Ultimately, after two years of R&D and many trials, Todd learned that the only fiber that fit his dad's criteria for success was bamboo. Use of bamboo in apparel is not an entirely new concept; however its true potential had never been fully realized. With the help of textile engineers, a lot of passion, and a little luck they developed their own yarn process and fabric finishing on a unique blend of bamboo, organic cotton, and elastane.

Still skeptical, thriv sent me a shirt to submit to some RunnerDude testing. I wasn't sure what to expect and I had a lot of questions. Bamboo? Was it going to be stiff? Breathable? What would happened when RunnerDude (the Super-Sweater) wore it? Would it retain water?

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Well, I'm happy to announce that it passed RunnerDude's testing. I wore the shirt during an intense workout at the gym one day and (then after a washing) I tested it out on a few rather sweaty runs. In all cases, the shirt worked amazingly well. During my gym workout, the shirt stretched with me and was not binding. It also was breathable and wore great. On the runs, I had similar results. The shirt did become damp (as expected), but it was not saturated. The material was breathable and did allow most of my perspiration to evaporate. The fabric is surprisingly soft. To avoid chafing, I usually either run shirtless or wear a fitted shirt so that the fabric doesn't rub my chest. This shirt was a looser fit so I was a little worried, but I didn't experience any chafing. YEAH!

To test the anti-microbial factors, I let the shirt sit out for 2 days after my last run. YIKES! Um...well, the word "RANK" comes to mind. I washed the shirt using regular laundry detergent and, voilà! The shirt came out smelling like a rose. Okay, it smelled like Tide, but you get the point.

Independent performance testing shows that thriv's unique fabric does equally well if not better in all testing categories—wicking, drying rate, UV-A, and UV-B radiation protection.

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Thriv performance apparel gets 5 Dudes on RunnerDude's Rating scale. This is a great product and a wonderful, environment-friendly alternative to synthetic petroleum-base performance fabrics. Currently thriv apparel can be purchased at select Sports Authority stores as well as online at SportsAuthoritycom. Give it a try. You'll be pleasantly surprised!