I logged more than 200 trail miles this season with ten different packs strapped on, from sweaty Phoenix ridgelines to misty Cascade switchbacks, to find the best hydration packs for hiking in . Our team weighed every model on a digital scale, timed how long each kept water cold, and deliberately abused the bladders to […]

I tested 8 different hydration vests for trail running across the Wasatch foothills and Boulder foothills for over three months. I logged 412 miles with each vest across short recovery runs, 50k training blocks, and one brutally hot ultramarathon in July. What follows is what actually held up versus what only looked good on paper. […]

I learned the hard way that dehydration can derail a perfectly good run. Last summer, I bonked hard at mile 16 of a trail half-marathon because I refused to carry water on my back. That single disaster sent me down a rabbit hole of testing every hydration vest, bladder pack, and soft flask setup I […]

I have lost count of the bottles I have dropped on technical singletrack over the last decade, which is exactly why I started testing the best hydration bladders for cycling back in . Our team has logged more than 4,200 combined miles of road, gravel, and mountain bike riding with every bladder on this list, […]

I ran my first ultra with a rigid 500ml bottle, and it took me about 12 miles to regret it. The sloshing, the bouncing on my hip, and the constant muscle clench to keep it stable turned a comfortable training run into a chiropractor appointment waiting to happen. After switching to soft hydration flasks, I […]

If you have ever finished a hot summer run with cramped fingers and a forearm that feels like it ran its own marathon, you already know why handheld water bottles for running matter. After 90 days of testing eight different models across 5Ks, long weekend runs, and a hot marathon training block, our team learned […]