Icebreaker - Pure Merino

Our NZ team have just hosted the inaugural Icebreaker Sock On, Sock Off Competition.  Teams got together this week and were timed to see who were the quickest to dismantle their new Run socks from the packaging, put them on, take them off and assemble them back in the orginal packaging again (kind of like a sock boat race!).

Sounds easy, but it’s not quite…  Check out the NZ ‘Soxy Bitches’ team attempt at staking their claim for global dominance.  We wonder which Icebreaker office will beat them…

Cheers to everyone who participated in our “What’s Next to Your Skin?” Vancouver 2010 competition!

Helen Danglmaier from Irdning, Austria, Europe (pictured below), is the lucky winner of the limited edition Icebreaker Whistler ‘10 gear, which includes a set of Bodyfit+, an Icebreaker “Whistler” Toque hat, Skier Mid Socks, the AC Glacier Scarf and the Long Sleeve Chase Crewe.  Nice one Helen!

We received 255 fantastic entries to the competition — from goats to babies to boys and girls in their Nature and Beast knickers (and less). Take a look back at what was submitted here.

Icebreaker was honoured to be the Official Baselayer Sponsor of the New Zealand Winter Olympic Team, and we’re proud of the Kiwi team who competed in Vancouver last month.  We had an awesome wrap up party on Monday.  The band was fantastic and we sold the bar out of beer!  Photos and video to come once Kent Hawkins, our marketing man in Canada, recovers from a chest infection that knocked him out that night (or so he says).

Let us know what you thought of the competition.  We’d like to do again if you’re all up for it?

I live and train in Squamish, BC, Canada. It is claimed “the outdoor recreation capital of Canada”, and I am about to tell you why. I am a Junior Canadian biathlete (cross country skiing and shooting) training as a member of the Biathlon BC High Performance Team. With minimal funding for sport in Canada, our team is constantly searching for inexpensive but effective training opportunities.

Every fall season, the biggest struggle for our sport is to get as many on-snow training hours as possible. The benefits of skiing on snow at this time of year have to be considered against cost and difficulty to get there. I think we found the perfect solution.

The access road started about 2 km from my house, and travels straight into the surrounding mountains. It was foggy when I woke up, and no snow on the ground. In a matter of about 2 hours, my coach and I were hiking thru ankle deep snow, with our ski equipment and clothes for three days.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking, but it was about a 13km hike to Elfin Shelter (where we stayed for 2 nights). It was another 6 km to Bishop Glacier, where we found near perfect crust skiing! It was the biggest open glacier I had ever seen, and provided hours and hours of exploring.  After the morning session, we would stop for lunch, and hang up our clothing to dry, before heading out again for the afternoon. I was so thankful to be wearing my Icebreaker Alpine socks. I would take them off from a two hour ski and in 20 minutes in the sun, they were dry and ready to be skied in again. I had more than one pair, obviously, but I used them for everything. The compression around the shin and calf lead for better muscle control during skiing. While on break, the same compression actually helped in quicker leg recovery.  Try, if you don’t believe me!

Back to my story, it wasn’t so much as ski training as it was an adventure! It felt amazing to be the only people in the mountains, and still only 30 km out of Squamish. My coach and I trained there for three days before making our trek back down to the real world. I went on that season to win three gold medals at Canadian Championships and attend my first ever World Junior Championships.

- Matt Neumann, Biathlete

It was a stunner of a day last Friday here in Wellington, home of the Icebreaker HQ.  The blue sky tempted us away from our desks and down to Oriental bay for a nice picnic, and swim (for some!).

We hope to make this a regular occurrence if only the infamous Welly weather holds out on us…

It’s all go in Vancouver at the moment for the 2010 Winter Olympics.  Icebreaker is proud to support Team NZ by supplying the official base layer to our athletes.  We’ve created a site  www.icebreaker.com/whatsnexttoyourskin to keep everyone up to date with what’s going on as the competition and hype heats up at this years winter Olympics Games.

Check the site regularly to see our latest blog posts, photos and video’s from the action in Vancouver and Whistler.

We’re also giving away Icebreaker product daily to the best photo we receive in our “What’s Next To You Skin” competition,  You can check out all the current entries (plus how you can enter yourself) here - we’d love to see a photo of you showing us whatever you have next to your skin!

Daily we draw a winner who will receive a new Icebreaker top and every entry will be in the grand prize draw to win a Limited Edition Icebreaker ‘Whistler’ top and Hat.  Drawn on March 2nd 2010.  View Terms and Conditions here.

Get photographing!

The team at the Icebreaker Head Office in Wellington were surprised today by a visit from cupid.  Valentine’s day might have officially been yesterday, but not here at Icebreaker.

Cupid and his helper appeared around morning tea time to spread the love during this romantic time of year.  They handed out heart shaped chocolates, badges, handcuffs and love dust.

It was magic and very special as Bryan Adams, Air Supply and Chris de Burgh were playing in the background for us all.  There’s definitely a sparkle in everyone’s eyes now and you can feel the love in the air for sure.

xx

Well the Icebreaker team have finished the last day of the Speight’s Coast to Coast World Multisport Championships on a high!  They’ve had a fantastic time, battling some crazy weather conditions and many a course change, and they’ve come out the other side pumped full of wonderful memories from an awesome event.

It’s fair to say Mother Nature showed us what she’s got with the athletes battling extreme weather conditions in the last 24 hours - torrential rain and gale force winds put everyone to the test.  Even the supporters suffered - check out the team trying to pitch the Icebreaker tent in the high winds!  Lucky they were all wearing Icebreaker to keep them warm we think.

The team have seen lots of people wearing their IcebreakerGT baselayer that they received in their race packs, it’s great to see they’ve joinded the flock and experienced the revolution of merino!

We’re really proud of our guys and can’t wait to celebrate with them when they’re back in the office next week.  Enjoy your merino BBQ at Sumner Beach tonight team, wish we were there!

The Icebreaker NZ team have gone down to the Speight’s Coast to Coast World Multisport Championships this weekend.  Day 1 is underway and the crew are having a blast competing (and supporting) at the race.  The event covers 243km across the Southern Alpine of the South Island in New Zealand and there’s still a long way to go, they’re set for a big weekend.

Our team is doing really well, there’s still even some with smile’s on their faces at the transitions.  A few of the support crew have even managed to rest up with a bit of  rexlexology treatment along the way - lucky!  Big congrats to our first Icebreaker Runner home - NZ Market Manager, Jason Brown!

Go team, we’re behind you 100%!

Taking a more leisurely lead up to Coast to Coast this year, and knowing that I am only doing half, has seen me enjoy all of my training, but left me slightly under-trained for the event!

Instead of slogging away with early morning starts, lunchtime training sessions, and weekend brick sessions like last year, this year I’ve relied almost entirely on gentle lunchtime runs, the occasional ride around the bays (on nice days, heaps of those in Wellington!) and a few weekend “long” runs.

Hopefully though, my Coast to Coast training “cramming” long weekend two weeks back has set me up to get through the run and cycle in one piece!

This was how it went:
• Friday - 12k run in Christchurch - wearing my favourite Icebreaker GT 150 Dash zip
• Saturday - 100k cycle from Queenstown to Glenorchy and back - wear testing our soon-to-be-released bike shorts and the same Dash zip
• Sunday - gentle trot along the shores of lake Wakatipu - again in the same top
• Tuesday - Coast to Coast run leg - yep, still in the same Dash Zip (which I also slept in Monday night)
• Wednesday - hobble around the office… then 2 hour massage

Fingers crossed that will do the trick!

Even after all of that, my Icebreaker top was still smelling sweet!

Just ask my flatmates, who I threw it at when I got home. “Ew that’s gross” quickly turned to “oh my god, it doesn’t smell. At all!”

- Kimberley Gilmour, HR Manager, Icebreaker Head Office

The Speight’s Coast to Coast traverses the South Island of New Zealand from Kumara Beach on the Tasman Sea to Sumner Beach on the Pacific Ocean. Over either two days (individuals or two person teams) or the one-day event (individuals only), competitors cycle 140 kms (three stages of 55km, 15 km and 70 km), run 36 km (including a 33 km mountain stage that crosses the Southern Alps) and kayak 67kms of the grade two Waimakariri River through the Grand Canyon of New Zealand, the Waimakariri Gorge.  Icebreaker is sponsoring this event in 2010, and a bunch of us are competing.  Here’s an excerpt about the lead up from one of our team members:

So why am I doing the one day Coast to Coast?  Mainly I believe, because it is a fantastic opportunity to learn about myself.  I know that to get there I have to push myself to my physical and mental limits.

So with only weeks separating me and the start line, do I feel ready?  Well yes I think I do, but I am sure there will be some nerves and doubts…  But that is part of why I’m doing it really.  We face challenges because they test us and make us stronger.  In the act of thinking about the question of “am I where I want and need to be?”,  I have to reflect on where I was when I was told I would be on the Icebreaker Team.  I was nowhere fit enough (7kg heavier than I am now), and I had no kayak or decent road bike.  All I really had was a desire to find a new challenge and a giant opportunity.

So now here I am, metaphorically putting the last strokes of the first rapid that we call preparation.  The next rapid is more of the same but longer and I know from experience that to do well in a race, a rapid or life in general you need to be prepared, relaxed and focused on where we are going.  Bring it on!

- Dave Tait, Speight’s Coast to Coast competitor - Team Icebreaker