Adding Goggles to “XC” – Where’s the Line? Those of you who follow our marketing know we like to rib Zak about running goggles nearly 100% of the time – he’s fast, young, a racer, building an image – it all makes sense. Well a few evenings ago Joe and I launched on an after work evening ride and I noted he had a set of goggles wrapped around his helmet as we pedaled off. For those of you who don’t personally know Joe – he’s fast, not quite so young, races, and already has his image… - so if he’s doing it generally there is an absolute on trail advantage. I harassed Joe a bit about hanging out with Zak too much, becoming pretty enduro (what with his BikeCo CustomMTB rear Santa Cruz Nomad and Pro Tune 36 Float becoming his go to bike), etc and he had a distinctly serious set of reasons for his goggles. “Windshield for my face. Plain and simple. Every gouge on these lenses’ is something that I don’t want anywhere near my eyes. These evening rides I don’t really need glasses on the climb so it’s easy to put the clear goggles on my helmet and get the benefits on descent,” Joe articulated. He noticed I ran my finger across a recent cut in my eyebrow towards my ear, “Was that from riding? Harder to see every stick aimed at you as it gets darker? Getting older? Seriously you should ride in goggles.” I told Joe my thoughts about why goggles likely wouldn’t work and in typical form I was told “it’s cause you’re doing it wrong”, he grabbed an old set of his goggles for me to run and explained the setup. My Bio: My eyes are garbage. I wear corrective soft contacts as I am severely near sighted and have astigmatism. For those unfamiliar – astigmatism means my corrective lenses’ require a specific shape for specific parts of my eye. My contacts are slightly weighted at the bottom and when your eyes stay moist the contacts maintain alignment from the pendulum weight, so to speak. When your eye dries it negatively affects the quality of focus on your contacts and if they have rotated they will be mispositioned leading to even worse vision. Without glasses I notice that I fight drying eyes and contact alignment issues on about every descent. My Needs: I need eye protection, as evidenced by a stray branch cutting my forehead a week or so ago. I need my eyes to be able to breathe enough to stay moist. Previous goggle experience: I have run goggles riding big Enduro or DH terrain, but seldom on anything I was pedaling. I have had slight fogging issues, however more notably are dry eye issues leading to contact issues. “The key seems to be for mountain biking to pull some of the foam from the top and the bottom to provide some airflow. We don’t have the super extreme dust like moto that requires as much filtration. Then if you want the real trick it’s the slight cutout over the nose. I guarantee you these are going to work for you.” JB1 So I decided to try it out. I was really pleasantly surprised. My eyes were comfortable the entire descent – no smashing my eyes shut trying to make tears to reset contact lenses. Joe’s modifications seemed to allow just the right amount of air flow – I didn’t feel like I was in a green house space helmet, my eyes didn’t dry out, I didn’t have debris in my eyes. Did I feel a bit “Enduro” for a Sunday evening Whiting Ranch run? Ya, kind of. But the performance gains were really noticeable. Less ridden trails with real brush issues the goggles would allow me to be 100% more confident in corners near the vegetation line. The added confidence from increased protection had another distinct benefit: I felt comfortable to blink more. REMEMBER to blink! Great pre-race advice from an old timer a few years ago – I sort of laughed it off until I realized about 45 seconds into the descent I hadn’t blinked at all. Remember to blink – I still have to remind myself of that going fast whether on a bike, car or motorcycle… Do you ride Joplin, Kernville, North Laguna, off the map Sedona, or anything else overgrown with sharp bits of nature reaching out at you? Well, you should have goggles. Are you fighting with any of the symptoms I mentioned on your local rides? Well you should investigate goggles… Check out the best from RIDE 100% here: bikeco/goggles-list.aspx
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 01:24:27 +0000
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