Things We Use

A little bit about the things we use in our running and on our site

If you’re interested in our running gear, what we’re using for filming, the technology behind the project and even the books we’re reading, this page provides a list of links and recommendations. We’ve only just started, so expect this to fill up a bit as we get more gear and can provide informed recommendations on what w’re using.

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click one and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission — at no extra cost to you. We only recommend things we genuinely find useful or believe in, whether they have an affiliate programme or not. We don’t accept sponsored posts or paid placements — all opinions are our own. You can read more about our views on this on our affiliates page.

Running Shoes

I’m currently running in:

  • Hoka Bondi 9 – I’ve only done a short distance in these, but they feel fast and I seem to run with more of a midfoot strike in them.
  • Altra FWD Via – The most comfortable low-drop road shoe I’ve found so far.
  • Altra Experience Wild – I love the wide toe-box and they’ve worked well on the muddy hills in Vietnam.

Running Watches

I’m rocking the Garmin Forerunner 965 which Joy bought for my birthday as a surprise a couple of years ago. It’s my default running watch now. I’ve got my old Fenix 7s as a backup for Japan though, and that’s another fantastic watch.

Joy is using the Amazfit Blip 6, and it seems to be great value for money. It’s doing everything she needs it to as a beginner runner.

Bags and Belts

Though Japan, I’m going to be wearing the Salomon ADV Skin 12. I’ve only worn it a couple of times so far. As it has the bottle holders and pockets on the front, as well as the bag, it covers quite a lot of chest and back, making it a bit warm for use in Vietnam. I’ll report back in due course.

Other Gear

For some of the other bits and pieces I regularly use and recommend:

Camera Gear

We’ve ended up with loads of cool kit for filming things. What’s working for us so far:

  • DJI Action 4 – my bread and butter camera for running with.
  • Insta 360 Go S – Joy’s action camera, for cycling and getting cool shots with.
  • Sony ZV1 – Our camera for stills and for some of the static vlogging type bits. We went with the Mk1.
  • iPhone 14 Pro – Cinematic landscape shots and low-light bits.

Audio Equipment

Website Hosting

We currently use Hostinger for our website hosting. This is down to me already owning a cheap hosting package before starting this project, and the interface is nice and easy to use. You can get great deals on the low-end hosting, which is what I did. But for more technical projects, I’d suggest looking at Mythic Beasts.

Newsletter

We’re using Beehiiv for our newsletter. It’s a new tool for us and looks like it has a lot of nice features, but that comes with a bit of a learning curve for setting up. We’ve really found it great for a weekly newsletter.

We’re using Mailerlite for delivering our members-only updates. We chose this because unlike Beehiiv, it has a mobile app and one of our membership perks is letting people see quicker, more informal updates along the way.

Email / VPN / Drive

I use a combination of Proton services for my email, VPN and cloud backups. I really like their email and calendar apps. I have had mixed experiences with their VPN, but at times when it hasn’t worked well for me, I’ve purchased a short package with Mullvad VPN. The drive is okay – although the backup and management of photos from my phone is somewhat clunky.

Forms

Any forms that we send out are done using Tally.so which is quite simple to use, does the basics well and also integrates with Make…

Automations

…which brings us on to automations. We use Make.com to pipe everything together – from connecting forms to databases to connecting bits to our internal team Slack.

Analytics

We’re running umami.is for our analytics. Umami is an open-source, privacy-focused web analytics tool that serves as a lightweight alternative to Google Analytics. It does not collect or store personal data, avoiding the need for cookies, and is GDPR and PECR compliant.

Reminder: This post contains affiliate links. What does this mean?