Did you
know that an elite athlete can inhale around 160-190 litres of air
per minute even at very high altitudes and by high, we mean 8,000
metres?
The danger is that processing that volume of very cold and very
dry air brings on a high risk of both dehydration and hypothermia
which, in turn, has implications for both performance and personal
safety.
A new PowerShield mask - right - produced by Polartec with
the Federation for Sport at Altitude and the Polytechnic of Turin
aims to limit both dehydration and chilling by recovering heat
generated by physical effort and using it to warm and humidify the
air drawn into the respiratory tract.
According to Polartec, testing by Italian 'Skyrunner' -
high-altitude racer to you and me - Bruno Brunod on Everest produced
'excellent results' which will be researched further later in the
year. Obviously if you're using supplemental oxygen then all bets are
off - and you're cheating anyway. I mean, if I can do Snowdon without
oxygen... ;-)
PowerShield was chosen for its combination of warmth, lightness
and breathability. It's one of our favourite fabrics, being 98
per-cent windproof. The missing 2 per-cent of proofing means that the
fabric offers appreciably better moisture vapour permeability (or
what gear testers usually refer to as 'breathability), allowing
moisture generated by exertion to escape more easily.
For more technical details of Polartec fabrics see www.polartec.com
