So Cool in Wool

Review of Ice­breaker GT Run Gear

It might come as a shock to you that to remain cool on the trail, or wher­ever you run, you might want to try wear­ing all wool. It cer­tainly sounded counter-intuitive when I heard that Ice­breaker makes per­for­mance gear out of merino wool. With images of thick, scratchy sweaters pop­ping into my head, wool seemed like the last thing I would want to put on my body when prepar­ing for a run. It turns out wool man­u­fac­tur­ing has come a long way from those ski sweaters you see snow bun­nies wear­ing in ski lodges in old James Bond movies.

I was con­tacted by Natureshop, an online retailer of nat­ural cloth­ing, footwear, and home­wares, inquir­ing if I would be will­ing to test and review Icebreaker’s new run­ning gear (due to hit US stores in Spring 2011, but cur­rently avail­able on Natureshop’s site). I eagerly accepted the offer, hav­ing worn some of Icebreaker’s gear for the past year or so on my runs, ever since I came across them at the San Fran­cisco Marathon expo last year (the year of my back surgery). I was excited to give Icebreaker’s new running-specific gear a try, as I had been wear­ing their gen­eral per­for­mance tops. A few days later I received a pair of the new Dis­tance Run Shorts and Ace Tank (shown below).

Note: These goods were pro­vided free of charge to me with only the expec­ta­tion that I would give them a try and share my expe­ri­ence. None of the links are affil­i­ate links, mean­ing I don’t get a cut of any­thing you buy if you hap­pen to fol­low a link. I sim­ply pro­vide them as a resource for you.

First Impres­sions

The first thing I noticed as I pulled out my shorts and tank from the ship­ping packet were the mes­sages on the plas­tic bags con­tain­ing the shorts and tank. Under the Ice­breaker logo was the fol­low­ing statement:

“As part of our com­mit­ment to sus­tain­abil­ity, this bag is made of recy­cled plas­tic. It includes a com­pound that assets in oxo-biodegration if it ends up in a land­fill – although we’d pre­fer you to recy­cle it through your local recy­cling cen­tre. We’d pre­fer to not even use this bag but it’s needed to pro­tect your Ice­breaker from when it leaves us till when it reaches you.”

This mes­sage rein­forced for me that Ice­breaker is authen­ti­cally try­ing to be more sus­tain­able, some­thing I very much appre­ci­ate. It was also the first time I had heard of oxo-biodegration com­pounds being added to plas­tic bags. I think I’m able to recy­cle #4 through my weekly recy­cling pickup, so that’s where the bags are headed.

The Ice­breaker tank and shorts felt quite soft when I pulled them out of the bags. I held the shorts up and noticed they didn’t have the same feel as the other run­ning shorts I have. The Ice­breaker shorts are a lit­tle more sub­stan­tial, obvi­ously not made of purely syn­thetic mate­r­ial. I read the tag that was hang­ing on the shorts and noticed that the shorts indeed con­tained merino wool – to be expected from Ice­breaker – yet also con­tained Lycra. This was a sur­prise to me. One of the rea­sons I like Ice­breaker is that all of their cloth­ing is 100% merino wool – I really like the idea of not wear­ing syn­thetic mate­r­ial. The tag explained that Lycra is used “as a struc­tural frame­work for finer yarns.” I think the use of Lycra is new with this year’s GT Run apparel. The inter­nal tag on the tank says the body con­sists of 96% merino wool and 4% Elas­tane and the shorts are 97% merino wool. So the gar­ment is pretty much wool.

Per­for­mance

My first oppor­tu­nity to run in the shorts and tank came on a rainy North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Autumn day recently. I drove 20 min­utes to my usual week­end run­ning spot, Wun­der­lich Park in Wood­side, CA, in the Santa Cruz moun­tains half-way between San Fran­cisco and San Jose. It was the first storm of the sea­son and I was quite excited about the return of real weather after months of lit­tle to no rain. It was in the upper 50s as I headed up into the hills. I wore my Sugoi Hydro­lite jacket over the tank to keep some warmth around me and stay a lit­tle dry. On my feet were my Vibram Five Fin­gers with Injinji merino wool socks (the ones with toes).

It’s soft.

I really like the way the shorts feel. The inner lin­ing doesn’t chaff my legs the way my usual run­ning shorts do (North Face). The lin­ing is over 90% merino wool and is very soft. They felt great. The Ice­breaker tank top fit well, too. It’s not at all itchy and is cut large enough around the arms to give plenty of room for move­ment. It was just what I needed under my jacket.

No stink!

Wool is an incred­i­ble fiber. It repels mois­ture so it not only dries quickly, it also doesn’t hold bac­te­ria. Mother nature’s nat­ural antimi­cro­bial prop­er­ties means it doesn’t stink, even after a sweaty run. When I got back from my 5.5 mile run, I sim­ply set the tank top and shorts out flat to air dry. Later that day they were not only dry, they had no smell. It’s quite incred­i­ble. Because there’s no smell, they don’t need to be washed which saves water and increases the life of the mate­r­ial. There are sto­ries of peo­ple not wash­ing their Ice­breaker cloth­ing for months, and the mate­r­ial still free of funk. This is a huge advan­tage over syn­thetic cloth­ing. Syn­thetic mate­ri­als are noto­ri­ously bad for how they reek. So much so that an indus­try has popped up to sell us spe­cial deter­gents to get the funk out. No need with Icebreaker’s nat­ural fibers for any spe­cial chemicals.

Full breatha­bil­ity.

Wool actu­ally breathes really well. It might seem counter intu­itive as it’s easy to think of wool being very warm, but wool lets air escape. Ice­breaker has dif­fer­ing degrees of warmth, from fine, 150, to very warm, 300 and thicker. The num­bers refer to how well heat is held under the fab­ric, but at all lev­els the fab­ric lets air escape. I stopped wear­ing syn­thetic shirts because I felt so stuffy under them. Believe me, you haven’t felt breath­able cloth­ing until you try Icebreaker’s merino wool! Run­ning on warm days in other Ice­breaker tops have been very pleas­ant expe­ri­ences. Water is nat­u­rally wicked away to cool the body. It’s quite miraculous.

Track­ing it Baack

With each piece of Ice­breaker cloth­ing comes what they call a Baa­Code. It’s a unique code you can use to trace the garment’s wool back to the farm it came from in New Zealand. This is so cool. I went to Icebreaker’s web­site and entered the Baa­Code found on my shorts into the field at the top of the home­page. The fol­low­ing page appeared while the search for my data was being per­formed. Appar­ently, the sheep that gra­ciously gave their warm coats so I could wear my shorts on the trails half way around the world came from 4 sta­tions on the South Island of New Zealand (nar­rowed down from 120 sta­tions). One of these sta­tions is the Lindis Peak Sta­tion. Click­ing on a link I could watch a video of Tom Moore, the sta­tion man­ager, talk­ing about the sheep, farm, and ter­rain on which the sheep roam. 

There are also pho­tos of the sheep up on a moun­tain in the snow. While there’s a good chance the sheep in the pic­ture did not pro­duce the exact fibers that are now in my shorts, I felt more con­nected to the source of my cloth­ing after watch­ing the video. Maybe it’s just me, but I really like know­ing about the peo­ple and ani­mals involved in the pro­duc­tion of stuff I buy. Ice­breaker has done a phe­nom­e­nal job of bring­ing the user closer to the source through this inter­ac­tive web­site. Check it out!

Com­pany History

Ice­breaker was cre­ated by its cur­rent CEO, Jeremy Moon, in 1995 in Welling­ton, New Zealand. Like most inno­va­tions, Ice­breaker has its roots in a per­sonal con­nec­tion made. Jeremy Moon met sheep sta­tion man­ager Brian Brak­en­ridge who had cre­ated an all-wool under­wear pro­to­type. A com­pany was formed soon after to sell the under­wear. Ice­breaker con­tin­ued to grow its prod­uct line as well as inter­na­tional distribution.

I like the way Jeremy, the CEO and founder, explains the premise for the com­pany from inception:

“The plan was sim­ple: let’s be what the oth­ers weren’t. They were syn­thetic; we were nat­ural. They were about sweaty men; we were gen­der inclu­sive (I have three older sis­ters who were big on this). They were about hard adven­ture; we were about kin­ship with nature. They were about func­tion only; we were about design and cre­ativ­ity. Explor­ing for us wasn’t the high­est peak, but an explo­ration of some­thing much big­ger – nature itself.”

Some­thing about this state­ment hits me squarely. I can relate. There’s power in nature. I feel it every time I run in it, and why I pretty much only run trails. It’s about nature for me prob­a­bly more than it is run­ning. I appre­ci­ate Jeremy’s per­spec­tive and phi­los­o­phy. One of his lines hits pretty hard. And I like it. “When you’re in nature, does it make more sense to wrap your­self in nature, or in plastic?”

Icebreaker’s brand­ing has been quite sharp and no doubt has played a role in the company’s growth and con­tin­ued suc­cess. Ads of the last few years have fea­tured naked mod­els appear­ing like mythic crea­tures with the stun­ning New Zealand land­scape as a backdrop.

The Kiwi in Me

I must admit that I like sup­port­ing a New Zealand com­pany, aka, a Kiwi com­pany. My mother was born in Auck­land on the North Island and I have rel­a­tives still liv­ing there. I’ve only vis­ited once, but I feel rather con­nected to the coun­try and the peo­ple of it. The nat­ural beauty, abun­dant friend­li­ness of Kiwis, and a clear lean towards extreme sports is some­thing to be proud of. Regard­less of my blood­line, I like that Ice­breaker has revived a dying indus­try. Ice­breaker now pur­chases 20% of the wool New Zealand pro­duces each year. I feel good about sup­port­ing the sta­tions and tra­di­tional way of life. And, yeah, I do feel proud to have Kiwi blood. It’s a great coun­try, and a great company.

Bot­tom Line

I’m con­vinced. Wool is it for me. I love the idea of wear­ing nat­ural fab­rics, yet not hav­ing to com­pro­mise on per­for­mance. The fact that I don’t have to wash my wool gear very often (when you do wash it, just toss it into the wash­ing machine and then lay flat to dry) means the fab­ric expe­ri­ences less wear and will last longer.

There are a grow­ing num­ber of com­pa­nies mak­ing wool active-wear, but I like know­ing I’m sup­port­ing a com­pany who’s focused on sus­tain­abil­ity, treat­ing employ­ees well, and never com­pro­mis­ing on qual­ity. I’m a fan!

Now the price can seem pro­hib­i­tive upon first glance. $60 for a tank and $65 for a pair of shorts? That’s where Natureshop comes in. They have lower prices and their prices include ship­ping, too! And as a car­bon neu­tral com­pany, you can still feel good about a sus­tain­able sup­ply chain.

Fur­ther Resources

More infor­ma­tion about Natureshop.

Icebreaker’s web­site.

Time’s arti­cle about Moon and Ice­breaker, Ice­breaker is a Nat­ural.

Pho­tos from Natureshop and Icebreaker.

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