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Thursday, January 06, 2011

Superfan Daily: Glider Gloves

It's winter.  You wear gloves.  You use an iPhone, iPad, or similar touch-screen device, but have to take off your gloves to use it.  So do I.

Recently I bought* a pair of Glider Gloves, which have conductive threads woven into them and allow the wearer to use said touchscreen device without baring skin to the elements.  How did they perform?

My iPhone was very responsive to the gloves when I first put them on.  After a six-mile run, during which I built up a decent sweat, they still worked but not quite as well.  As gloves they're pretty good, but not anything you'd want to use under extreme situations.  Yesterday afternoon's weather in Toledo was nothing bitter for the lower Rust Belt--30 degrees, windy and overcast--and my fingers were a bit chilly for the first five minutes, but after that were just fine.

The gloves are a basic stretchy knit style and available at glidergloves.com for $24.99.  Athletes, coaches and officials who use touchscreen devices in less than optimal weather would find them useful but pricy.


*I was not compensated in any way for this review, nor did I receive any merchandise.  I'm not opposed to free swag, though--send me some if you've got it.

Track on TV
Sydney 2000: Stories of Olympic Glory, 9:00 PM on Universal Sports (reruns at midnight)
Endurance, 11:35 AM tomorrow on Flix

News Links
Runner's World's Racing News has all the headlines: Usain Bolt, Caster Semenya, Bay to Breakers and more.

Track and Field News released its 2010 women's Performamce of the Year rankings.  Apparently no one gave any thought to Nadzeya Ostapchuk's massive 21.70 indoor throw.

They also just released their 2010 men's Performance of the Year rankings.  David Rudisha is now just the second man to ever go 1-2 (the other is Usain Bolt).

World XC champ Florence Kiplagat will run her first-ever marathon at Boston this April.

Olympic news:
*The IOC is considering auctioning off the US television rights to the next four Olympics (2014, '16, '18 and '20) instead of just the next two.  This means a better chance for ESPN, who had been adamant about such a deal and (in my opinion) would do a much better job than NBC. 
*Japan is seriously looking at a 2020 bid by Hiroshima.

Britain's Guadian newspaper is running a weekly series on training in the Kenyan highlands.  Here is part one.

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