After I wrote up my strategies for packing light in the winter, I promised a post showing how I actually wore the clothes I packed for my trip–well, here it is! In my original packing post, you can read a little more about what I chose to pack and why. I hope that this post gives you an insight into the “in practice” part of minimal packing instead of just the “in theory” bits.
This was my plane outfit for the outbound leg of the trip. Since I was flying west -> east, a red-eye was basically inevitable, and red-eyes mean leggings. Since the chai time sweater covers my booty (albeit barely) and the boots cover most of my legs, it makes it less obvious I’m committing the leggings-as-pants “sin”. I layered my vest and my jacket since they are too bulky to pack and also because I am always cold on planes. I actually ended up using the vest (mostly the hood) as a pillow against the bulkhead, which worked surprisingly well.
The first full day of my trip, I wore this rulu goodness out for a quick run. Since I live at 7000 ft above sea level, the elevation has some pretty dramatic impacts on athletic performance due to the decreased atmospheric pressure and therefore decreased pressure of oxygen. (Side note: the overall percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere is always the same, about 21%, so that’s not what’s different at altitude.)
At 7000 ft, your lungs only get about 75% of the oxygen that you’d get sea level, which you can imagine makes things way worse when you’re huffing and puffing your way through a tough workout. Although some fascinating physiological changes take place in the bloodstreams of altitude dwellers as the body adapts, you never can be quite as efficient at high altitude. So, as a lover of all things quantitative, I like to test my performance any time I go take trips to sea level.
This time, I ran, since that’s a pretty purely cardiovascular thing. My 1-mile PR at 7000′ was a measly 9:17, but at sea level I ran it in 8:57. Not as dramatic as I expected and certainly not as dramatic as I hoped, but still an effect.
It’s a pretty imperfect science, though, because there are a lot of variables that could be throwing things off, e.g., humidity, jet lag, crappy travel food, and course measurement inaccuracies. Also: the sample sizes of 1 would make any good scientist cry. As I take more trips, I’ll be able to test and establish better methodology for my “studies”…
Just a little trip to lulu. :)
I mentioned in my original post that my trip was pretty casual, and indeed, it doesn’t get a lot more casual than this outfit. But since these are all pieces I really like, it was an outfit I liked wearing.
I went out for a casual dinner with friends in this outfit. This is similar to my plane outfit above, but I swapped the leggings out for jeans to make this a little bit more put together. I really like the bumble berry peeking out from under the black sweater.
This outfit made me really wish I’d had some more understated booties to bring. This was probably my least favorite outfit, but hey, it happens.
Back to something a little nicer for tapas dinner. I used my coco pique as “tights” for this dress–playing with the various textures brings a little more interest to a neutral outfit. Some gold jewelry would’ve been a nice touch here, but my jewelry game is frankly terrible.
But, I just love the color that my blue Lorna Jane vest brings to this outfit.
I really like that the cutout back of this pullover makes a very plain outfit a little more snazzy.
Another jeans-pullover combo for yet more hanging out, and another outfit where I kinda want to cover up the shoes–eep!
Lastly, this was my plane outfit for my journey home, and also the only outfit I wore twice. I wore this with just the vest and no scarf one day, and then again with all these layers for traveling. The nice thing about using leggings instead of tights is that you don’t have to be paranoid about flashing anyone. It’s nice to have that peace of mind when you’re into your 14th hour of travel and you’ve pretty much stopped giving any bothers about anything.
If the leggings-as-pants sin would go away, my life would be so much easier! I really love the coco piqué tights as leggings look. I think you’re right that the look less like leggings & more like tights. I love the look!
Running 20 seconds faster in 1 mile is a nice improvement! Sounds like a fun experiment.
It’s funny because another test I did over the summer resulted in about a 9% increase in performance, so I was hoping for that (would’ve been almost a minute), but it was not meant to be! The interesting thing is that there is a temporary spike in performance above normal sea level performance when you get down to sea level. It’s all natural blood-doping. ;)
Also, I definitely commit the leggings sin pretty frequently, but if I’m going somewhere other than the grocery store I try to abide by social norms, haha. I feel like if they’re not see through and if it’s not revealing too many lumps and bumps, they’re basically pants… :)