Talking about Head Lamps

Browsing my Twitter feed earlier this week, I stumbled on to an article about tips for night time trail running.

Seems like there is always plenty of advice about how to do something after I have learned the hard way.

While their tips were good, some I thought made sense, seemed to be common sense and others, well I am not so sure.

One of the tips talked about head lamps that had the light on the front and batteries in the back. These head lamps tended to be brighter and lasted longer because of the larger batteries. They also seemed indicate that it was better on the head and neck because the weight balance between the light and the batteries.

Now, this tip made sense to me. However, I have not had one of these type of head lamps so I cannot speak from real life experience from using it. What I can say is after a few hours, I do feel the strain in my neck muscles. My head lamp type is smaller and has both the batteries and the light on the front. The tip did point out that these type of head lamps were slightly heavy so it may well offset the front battery/light type. Something to explore in the future. 

Another tip was to replace the batteries before your race. This one I thought was pretty much common sense. Before racing last Friday night, I changed out my batteries. I'd used these batteries for a while so I wasn't taking any chances. The last thing I needed was the batteries dying on me while I was out on the trail. Leaving my hot and tired body standing in pitch black darkness. 

This next tip, I was on the fence about using. They suggested that a runner should turn up the brightness on the downhills while turning down brightness on the uphills. The idea being that this would extend the battery life.

To me, this technique has to be put into perspective. If I am running night time race, and I need my head lamps to last through out the night. I can see the benefit of using this technique. However, if I am running a shorter race, I would rather have the head lamp on full brightness the entire time. It is easy enough to fall going up hill. May be not with the same likelihood as going downhill but still possible. I kept my head lamps on full brightness the other night but this didn't stop me from stumbling more than a few times.

The one tip that I expected to see but didn't was running with two head lamps. When I hit the trails for a night run, I always run with a head lamp on my head and one at my waist. This gives me two light perspectives which cast just enough light and shadow for me to pick up the difference in the rocks and roots. Then, if one goes out or if you read my earlier post about Marcus falling and the batteries coming out of his head lamp, having two head lamps is a good thing. Once they are both strapped into place, I don't even notice them.

Numerous head lamps are on the market but my go to head lamp the last few years is the Black Diamond Head Lamps. They take 3 AAA batteries and cast 300 lumens of light so across the two head lamps, I am creating about 600 lumens of light.

This is plenty of brightness for me, but I will say that I ran a night race last fall where I was over lighted by another runner. I have no idea what type of head lamp that he was using. I asked but he never responded. And since it was dark, I had no idea who he was to follow up after the race. However, the light from his head lamp far out shined my two head lamps. It was like running with the Sun behind me. Honestly, this was the one time that I didn't mind having someone running on my “6”. I had no trouble seeing the trail ahead or the rocks and roots from 10 yards away.

The Cool Down Runner