![]() ![]() Alex is also a dedicated eMTB rider, and still dabbles in racing of a sort, doing his best to top the Strava leaderboard on the steepest, gnarliest and twistiest trails the Tweed Valley has to offer – just for fun, of course. He’s one of BikeRadar’s lead testers and knows how to push bikes and products to the limit, searching out the equipment that represents the best value for money. Since working for MBUK, Alex’s focus has moved to bike tech. Alex then moved back to the UK and put his vast knowledge of mountain biking to good use by landing a job working for MBUK magazine as features editor. Hitting those famous tracks day in, day out for eight years, he broke more bikes than he can remember. Alex moved to Morzine in the French Alps at 19 to pursue a career as a bike bum and clocked up an enormous amount of riding. ![]() He started racing downhill at the tender age of 11 before going on to compete across Europe. The Black Hole fabric of the bag’s body has proved to be pretty tough, resisting a host of bramble, hawthorn and gorse bush attacks, but I have managed to snag the material on one of the stretchy side bottle pockets.Īlex Evans is BikeRadar’s senior mountain bike technical editor. Removing a water bottle, sandwiches and bananas and wallet shaved some serious grams, and once it was a more reasonable 1,500g it barely moved at all.Īnd because it was lighter, I was able to wear the straps tighter without putting undue pressure on my bladder. In reality, I was carrying around half the above weight in the bag on rides. In fact, the bouncing was so limited that I only noticed it when the pack was seriously heavy, and I didn’t really consider it to be a problem. I suspect it bounced upwards because of the shape of my waist it was unable to fall down any further because of my hips, but could be bounced upwards because there’s less rigid body structure between the hips and rib cage.Īfter a bounce, the pack always settled back to its pre-movement position and never required additional readjustment, which was a real bonus. When it did bounce around it was only upwards – there was no side movement and it didn’t drop below my hips. ![]() There’s loads of space for all of your kit. Patagonia Black Hole Waist Pack 5L details and specifications The Patagonia Black Hole Waist Pack 5L looks to fly the flag for the bum bag fanatic, so I found out just how good – or bad – it is. Now widely accepted as a backpack alternative and no longer subject to the fashionista’s sneers, quite a few brands have jumped on the fanny pack bandwagon, extolling their virtues as genuine on-bike kit-carrying solutions. ![]() In the mountain bike world, riders have heavily relied on backpacks to transport their clobber around, but as some got increasingly frustrated with the cumbersome bag weighing them down and causing their backs to look like they’ve just taken a shower, new, or rather, revisited solutions started to (re)appear.Įnter the bum bag. So, where did it all go so wrong for the waist pack? Once the droves of unfashionable people cottoned onto their practicality and bought them en masse, the sharp end of the fashion industry washed the practical packs from their hands. Although bum bags or, if you’re American, fanny packs have been around since the 1960s, it wasn’t until the eighties that they really started to shine, becoming iconic with the era’s loud and sometimes awful fashion trends.īut it was the practicality of the fanny pack that really captured people’s imaginations as they offered bigger, more comfortable storage than pockets without the sweaty back syndrome and bulk associated with backpacks. ![]()
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