SubscribeI’ll admit it, sure, no problem-o. I… listen to music when I train.. There I said it! Yea I know, some of you are purists and the rumble of the carbon rims on the asphalt, the sound of the wind through your helmet, the leaves and birds in the trees when you run and the rhythmic sloshing sounds of water when you are putting in the miles in a pool or openwater, these are all the things you need to keep you company while you put in the endless miles of training leading up to your next big race. Well Bully for you! 🙂 (Kidding 🙂 )
Not me man! I like to give my brain something to do other than be bored and complain. I fill my head full of uptempo electronic/trance music, or a podcast or even the radio, to help pass the time as my arms and legs do what my brain is telling them. Sure, it’s different on race day: no music, but the energy and vibe of the race is more than enough to keep boredom at bay 🙂
So, while adroitly bypassing the discussion of what I listen to, and whether or not you like/dislike/distain trance, lets rather talk about how to get those digital voices speaking to you in your head while you swim, bike and run.
The Swim
When I swim I wear silicon earplugs. I like these cheap-o earplugs because I don’t have to care if I lose one, they seal well, and are.. well.. cheap 🙂 Nothing wrong with cheap if it does the job! Because I wear silicon earplugs, it pretty much removes all options but 1 from my choices for swim music. And that’s JUST FINE because the only choice left is BY FAR the best solution on the market today. I speak of, the several times reviewed on this blog, Finis SwiMP3.
The SwiMP3 uses bone conduction to get the music into your noggin, it’s simple and light and doesn’t force you to wear funky waterproof hydraphonic earplugs that you won’t be wearing on race day. I can’t imagine the hours and hours spent slogging back and forth in the pool without the companionship that my swimp3 offers me. No really! 😀 I’ve reviewed the SwimP3 here.
Bike
On the bike, unless I’m on a completely closed course (i.e. never), I really don’t like covering or plugging my ears to the sounds of oncoming traffic. So things like earbuds, Yurbuds (my fav running music solution that I’ll talk about more in a sec), Jaybirds, etc. are all out.
I had found what I thought was a pretty good solution. The Tunebug Shake: a speaker designed to mount to your helmet and use the helmet as a resonator for the speaker, essentially turning your entire helmet into a speaker.
Unfortunately the company making the Tunebug is closed, but if you check ebay there is some stock being liquidated and you may still be able to pick one up on the cheap. 2 things I’ll say about the shake: from a sound quality perspective it’s pretty good; however, the battery life is a bit limited (3ish hours in my testing) and the attachment system is a bit fragile. I ended up using zipties to connect it to my helmet and it worked pretty well.
Recently, I’ve been testing the Cardo BK-1 Duo, I’ll have an in-depth review of it soon, but as an on-bike, open-ear music-while-you-train device, it absolutely rocks! Without giving too much away from the pending review, the bluetooth reception is super-strong, the battery life is in excess of 6 hrs, and the sound quality is on par with good quality headphones.
Running
When I run, I perhaps have the most freedom of audio choices: multiple players, headphones (wired and unwired), headphone styles, etc. etc. etc. are available. Really, the options here are bewildering. I cannot say that I’ve tried them all, but here are some generalities in my preferences (in order of importance):
- I prefer small (near weightless) devices to heavier/bulkier devices
- I prefer solid state to anything with a disk drive in it
- Must have good battery life (charging every 20hrs of use is ok, but more frequently is a pain)
- I’m not a fan of squishy-marshmellow type in-ear buds
- I prefer wireless to wired
In terms of the player, I’ve settled on 1 of 2 devices. (There are many many options here and I don’t think that 1 really is significantly stronger than another.) I live in an Apple dominated electronics ecosystem, so my solutions here are Apple-centric. My typical running-music player is my 6th gen iPod shuffle: it’s super small, has a radio and great battery life and a lot of storage for podcasts, playlists, etc. My 2nd choice, and this really is driven by whether I’m expecting an important call, is my iPhone. The iphone is bigger and bulkier than I’d prefer, but when the “real world”™ intrudes on my training time, it’s nice to have just 1 device for both music and to service those interruptions.
For sound presentation to my ears using either device I alternate between Yurbuds and Jaybirds. In “my perfect world” these two companies would partner and give me a yurbud earpiece with the jaybird bluetooth stereo headset, because I absolutely love the fit and feel of the yurbuds and the wireless freedom of the jaybirds, but I really dislike the jaybird in-ear spongy bud. Not enough to not use them, but enough that I have to be in the right mindset to use them. I just don’t like the dull rumble-thud that you get from sound transmission from your body into the ear with the marshmellow-type bud. If you’ve read my blog for a while, you’ll know that I love the Yurbuds. In fact I have several pairs some with microphones, some without and some spares. When I want the wireless-freedom-feel but not feeling the Jaybirds, I’ll either wrap the Yurbuds cord around my visor band, or coil it up and tuck it inside my hat. Both work well and keep the wires out of the way.
So there it is. My choices for swim/bike/run electronic companionship:
Swim: swimp3.2
Bike: Cardo BK-1
Run: iPod shuffle and yurbuds
Happy Training!
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