Yew Clothing » jt_wong

Accenture in Yew

jt_wong — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:50:44 +0000

Accenture was the latest company to choose Yew’s performance tops for their corporate adventures. Accenture’s JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge team were all wearing 100% recycled running tops in Battersea Park on July 8th. They were pleased to be able to get a sustainable solution for the team shirts – opting for our lightweight short sleeve Everywear performance tops. It was hot hot hot in London that night, and there seemed to be a cloud of dust following all the runners on the grass in the park. All the parks in London seem to have gone a bit more yellow than green with all this heat and no rain – you’ve got to laugh when you realise that you’re living in London and hoping for rain!

Yew outside, Adnams inside

jt_wong — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 09:55:33 +0000

Yew was selected to provide our sustainable Everywear performance tops to Adnams, the renowned beer company, for their running team. The Adnams runners tackled the Woodbridge 10k wearing 100% recycled sports tops. Adnams are more concerned with sustainability than your average brewery and have invested heavily in an eco distribution centre as well as creating a carbon neutral beer (East Green). As such, we were really pleased to be involved with them for their shirts. Adnams ran a blitz twitter campaign to find a slogan for the back of the shirt, which became:

“Feeling Fantastic Wearing Recycled Plastic

It’s better in the long run”

Just a 60km walk

jt_wong — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:27:21 +0000

We recently did a charity walk in the South Downs for the Child Welfare Scheme, a Nepal charity that we like. You can find out more about them on our People Yew Like page (http://www.yewclothing.com/community/people-yew-like). As it was ‘just a walk’ (and incidentally, the event was called ‘Just Walk‘) we didn’t really prepare that well. There was a training walk of about 30km (all pretty flat) so we thought that it would be moderately challenging. Jun had previously done a 50 mile walk and was confident that 60 km wouldn’t be that difficult in comparison (he may have forgotten to add the aging factor in, since his 50 mile walk was done in 1995). All those ultramarathon runners out there may laugh at a 60k walk, but it really was a long way. And a bit hilly too.

For pictures from the walk, go to our Gallery page – http://www.yewclothing.com/downloads/gallery/

We started at about 8.30 in the morning from Goodwood race course: all smiles and full of tea and bacon rolls. For the next few hours there were quite a lot of people around. We didn’t really head off that quickly, but just tried to keep an even pace up. The weather was awesome, so we were feeling pretty good. And after finding some gorgeous woods full of bluebelled carpets, we were liking our nature walk.

Then came Arundel Castle – which is rather nice, but also at the top of a hill – and we were definitely starting to feel the legs. Knee problems, groin strains and puffy ankles were starting to niggle at Team Yew, but there was a tea break at the top of another hill, at which point the sun disappeared and the wind picked up – giving us a rather cold and gloomy rest by this turret:

Fortunately, down the other side it was all sunshine and lush again. Oh, and then another hill as well.

The amazing thing about this tour of the South Downs was that we got to see so many things. We had woodland, rivers, chalk cliffs, castles, lots of hills, muddy marshland (apparently of great significance – but we didn’t stop to read the sign). By the time we set off from our dinner stop, we were ready to finish and have it all done with. We’d picked up a lone straggler from another group and walked the remaining miles with her in tow. There was a slight dip in morale when we realised that some of the distance markers near the finish were slightly out (making us think we had less to go than we did) and also the fact that they shoved a big hill right before the finish at Goodwood. Fortunately, a few pear drops solved that.

By the time we got to the finish at 9pm, the sun was dipping down. We were rewarded with shortbread at the finish (though a beer would have gone down quite well).

Marathon Fun

jt_wong — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:51:36 +0000

We’ve just finished the London Marathon Expo where we got to speak to loads of runners from different backgrounds. We met one of the only people to have done every London Marathon since it was founded in 1981. He told me there are 25 of them left and one of them is still under 50 – and still under 2 hours. Pretty amazing stuff.

We also got to meet Tristan Miller, who’s running 52 Marathons in 52 weeks all over the world. He’s doing it to raise money for UNICEF – which Jun worked at for a year, so he has a soft spot for them. You can check out his website at RunLikeCrazy.com. We gave him some free clothes to help him on his epic journey (see below…Tristan’s on the right, and you can see the reflective print on our everywear tops working well too!).

London Marathon Expo

jt_wong — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 13:34:11 +0000

Yew will be at the London Marathon Expo on 21st-24th April at ExCel Exhibition Center. It’s open to the public (not just to those running the Marathon), so please come down and say hello. We look forward to seeing lots of runners there – and best of luck to everyone running this year’s race!

Directions to ExCel are here

Visit the London Marathon Expo website to find out more: www.lmexpo.com

Run with your ipod?

jt_wong — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:46:55 +0000

Lots of us go running with headphones and music. I sometimes do when I run on my own. The right music can really motivate you, put you in the right mood and distract you from the hard work – making your workout that much better and enjoyable. Music can effectively reduce your perception of how hard you’re working. Some people love running to a certain beat. Haile Gebrselassie famously trains to Scatman because the tempo of the song fits with his world record pace. Maybe you just need to find the right track…

Many gym goers can’t live without music or the tv going as they crank out their time on the treadmill or bike. It’s easy to understand that since you’re not going anywhere – you really do want something to distract you.

However, there is a flip side. My running club has a specific policy against runners wearing headphones during club runs. Why? The gentle reason is that it’s anti-social. The serious reason is that a few years ago one of our runners was hit by a car and broke his leg – he was the only one in the group listening to music and the only one that didn’t stop as they were halfway across a road (presumably because everyone else heard or saw something, but he was distracted). Likewise, at athletics matches, you’re not supposed to wear headphones while on the track or field – you might not hear the warning horn go before the javelin starts to fly towards you…

So when I heard about this story on the radio, I figured it was worth sharing. Let’s hope that there aren’t many airplanes crashing where you go running but, it turns out, you can’t be too careful.

Free Delivery

jt_wong — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:44:35 +0000

Thanks to the success of our free UK delivery offer in February, we’ve decided to offer it for all UK orders, all the time.

Vertical Rush

jt_wong — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:42:12 +0000

42 Floors of running can have a strange effect on you. For me, it involved crawling around on all fours, unable to talk. Whilst on the floor (of the top floor in Tower42), the one thing I noticed was the building going up next door that was even taller than Tower42 – which I’d just raced up. My thought was – I wonder if they’re going to move the race over there when it’s done.

Well, we made it up: Dominic got up in 6.48 and I was 11 seconds behind him at 6.59. In the process we raised over £500 for Shelter, received bruises from elbows in the stairwell, got sore legs and won ourselves the best view in the city.

After bumping into Dom’s friend (and stand-up comic), David Whitney, we all retired for a celebratory drink at their friend’s wine bar – Planet of the Grapes. I can highly recommend both.

Here are some photos

Charity Auction

jt_wong — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:53:23 +0000

We’ve donated some of our clothes for a charity auction run by Trail Magazine.

You can see their auction on ebay here.

All proceeds from the auction will go to Community Action Nepal to help build a much-needed rescue shelter at 4750m in the remote Himalayan valley of Gokyo. This will help to save the lives of trekking porters when they are caught out in bad weather. www.canepal.org.uk

There’s 7 days left!

42 floors, 920 steps for Shelter

jt_wong — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 11:50:22 +0000

It’s been a while since I’ve done something silly for charity, so here’s this year’s. A friend and I have decided to run up 42 floors to the top of Tower 42 in London as part of an event organised by Shelter. It’s a short challenge – let’s hope it takes less than 10 minutes – but the burn on those legs is going to be interesting. And by interesting, I mean really painful.

All in a good cause – and, of course, Yew will be kitting out the team for the challenge.

If you’d like to join us on this challenge, we’re putting together a team. Everyone has to do all the floors, and will have to raise money for Shelter. We’ll support the team with free kit for everyone. If you’re interested, email us at info@yewclothing.com