There are those runners who always run naked (sans gadgets for those of you with dirty minds) and they scoff at those of us who use gadgets on a regular basis. Running or not, I love my gizmos, always have so of course this came over when I started running.

Because of my love for gadgets, this have given me the opportunity to be a bit of guinea pig at times. I love passing on my knowledge of things to you and you can count on these being honest reviews since I get zero compensation from anyone.

This week, I happened to try out two new things: KT Tape Skin Prep Spray and a Tooks hatphone.

KT Tape is not new and I’ve used it regularly for the past couple of years. But sometime during the summer I started having problems with the strips sticking at all or for less than a day. That’s not great when you want it to stay in place for 4-5 days. I’ve been good about following the directions for applying the tape but still, it was always hit or miss on how long the tape would last. I had resorted to using a bandage skin prep that is used in hospitals but that is expensive. Finally, I hit the KT Tape forum to see if I was the only pathetic soul with this problem — I’m not. It was reading through this thread that I learned that KT Tape makes their own skin cleaner and skin prep spray.

I got to try this out with the tendonitis on the top of my foot that bothers me from time to time. The feet are tricky because putting on and taking off socks can cause enough friction to pull on the tape and also get caught on sheets when you sleep. Last night I put on a new application using both the cleaning spray and the skin prep spray. Right away I could tell I was going to get a good stick. So far this has been working great and I can tell this application will last the whole week. I do have some parts that are pulling up but that’s because I didn’t wear a sock when I slept last night as is recommended. But if you have problems getting the tape to stick I would get this spray. You can buy the combo pack directly from KT Tape for about 20 bucks.

Years ago when Nike and Apple had their partnership with the iPod Nano and the Nike+ app they came out with a hatphone which was a beanie with built in headphones and a pouch for your nano. I loved this hat. My nano fit great and not having to string regular headphones under a beanie was a plus. They always seemed a little tight in my ears when I did that. I still use the hat but now I clip my shuffle into the Nano pouch. The hat however is white, or was white, and I wanted to get a black one to go with it but Nike doesn’t make them any more.

Bring in Tooks. There’s nothing complex about these hats. They have removable headphones that align with your ears. You can adjust the actual placement with the velcro on the headphones. Just plug the cord into your device and you’re ready to go. My one negative about this is that it just has the one long cord length so I have to coil the cord up into the hat to prevent it from swinging around. Since I attach my shuffle to the hat I don’t need all the cord. The Nike hat had a short cord but came with an extension if you wanted to use it with something other than the Nano. I don’t feel the cord so this is fine, just a minor inconvenience.

The sound quality is pretty good and you can still hear things around you like traffic. It comes in a bunch of different styles and is reasonably priced. I got mine for 18 bucks through the Active GearUp deals.

I was hoping to review the Tech4o watch that will accurately calculate distance without the use of a foot pod but my mailman was late today. I’m hoping to test it out tomorrow and will double fist with my Garmin to test it accuracy.

Gadgets are fun, especially when they work!