Gearblog! 25 May 2006

It's a weird world, read a few gear tests and there's a sort of base assumption that people function at a fairly constant sort of level, whereas in reality it doesn't work like that at all.

Try mountain walking or running with a heart rate monitor attached and you'll soon see what I mean. Hit a downhill or even a flat section and your heart rate plummets like a stone, but on any sort of climb, particularly if you're winding it up, it's easy to reach the sort of rates you'd expect when running hard...

That means that a garment that's comfortable on the climb probably won't keep you warm enough once you hit flatter ground or start going downhill. And if you think we've got it bad, pity the poor old cyclist, working like a sweating engine going uphill, but simply sitting there exposed to 40mph winds on the downs.

What's the answer?

Traditionally it would have been the layering system I guess, add more or more weather resistant layers when it's cold, take some off when you start to overheat, but let's be honest, it's a pain in the butt. The holy grail is a garment that you can wear all day without having to mess around layering and delayering.

I was reminded of it all by the return of the fabled Paramo Third Element jacket, a slightly barmy confection which featured a two-part construction consisting of... a waterproof gilet together with a removable shoulder and sleeve section.

It looks as daft as a daft thing, but the original worked surprisingly well for fast-moving stuff in cool conditions - when moving you simply wore the gilet bit and your exposed arms cooled you down brilliantly. When stopped or cooling, you simply threw on the sleeve section and bingo, a full-on weatherproof jacket with hood, instantly.

The good news for the three or four Third Element fans out there, is that it's back in a new, erm, allegedly neater form. Before it looked like a jacket that had been hacked to bits then re-built, mainly because that's just what it was. However for 2006 it's a new, streamlined design, it says here. Will it work? I'm watching out for the postie right now.

And What About Bikes?

The Third Element's great, well, unless you insist on wearing the sleeves on their own, but for say climbing or biking where you're mostly moving, it's not that practical. What's amazing though, is just how much heat you lose through your arms.

Forget pit-zips, which make hardly any difference in real life, what we need are sleeves with massive vents. Imagine, you start tanking up hill and you simply un-zip to have a vest-like cooling top, open the pockets and main zip too. Then when you top out, or start going down hill, cinch everything down and you're weatherproof again.

It'd work, trust me. So why isn't it out there? Simple, it's too 'niche', in other words, not enough people will buy it, unless, of course, Nike or Adidas come up with some trendified version for the masses.

Obviously, in an ideal world, all kit would fit me perfectly and conform to my slightly warped perceptions of what it would do. But it's not an ideal world, so for now we all have to de-layer, put up with the sweat or wear a Third Element and live with looking a bit silly, oh well ...