Paramo Cambia T-Shirts

What is a 'directional fabric' you might ask? This is where the modern knitting machines get very clever: one face of the fabric is smooth, and the other face is fleecy or honeycomb. If you wear the T-shirt with the fleece face inwards it will pull sweat off your body where the sweat will be evaporated by the smooth face on the outside. This smooth face will encourage any moisture to spread sideways on the surface increasing evaporation and keeping you dry. Of course the fleece side will provide some warmth since it stays mostly dry.

If you wear it smooth side inwards the T-shirt should be cooler. The exposed fleece side will not trap as much warm air, and the smooth side will still pull sweat off your skin. Paramo sent us two T-shirts: one Mens and one Womens. No, that is not us in the photo below. (Look closely: there are actually three people in that photo!) We normally wear our Taslan smocks and Taslan trousers when walking anyhow.

Instead, my wife Sue and I have been wearing these T-shirts on our morning runs. The route is about 8+ km long with a little bit of road running and a lot of rough dirt track with some steep hills to go up and down. The runs takes us about 62 minutes, and yeah, we time them. In summer time, we just have running shorts and one of these T-shirts, and in winter time we usually wear light, long athletic stretch tops and bottoms with the T-shirt over the top for a bit of warmth. Sometimes Sue wears the T-shirt under the long-sleeved top so she can take the long sleeves off if she gets too hot running.

Summer temperatures are usually not too high because we get up early before dawn to get some cool weather. Winter-time, I am a wimp and insist on waiting for the sun to start peeking over the horizon. It can still be sub-zero at that hour of the morning so I am often wearing light ski gloves and a hat of some sort as well.

Regardless of the weather, we get very hot and sweaty. That seems to be expected. Sometimes we have to take some clothing off while returning both in the summer and winter. However, I have to say that these Cambria T-shirts have been very comfortable, and they do not seem to get wet. My old poly-cotton t-shirt would come back soaked sometimes, but these T-shirts do seem to merit Paramo's claim for rapid drying. They come back dry, even if my face is dripping.

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