BRAND VISIT: NOPINZ
With their cooling SubZero range set to benefit turbotraining triathletes, we venture to Nopinz in Devon to hear first- hand about this British success story and why unbearably sweaty Zwift sessions might be a thing of the past
We think it’s time for the bookies to stop taking bets on ‘pingdemic’ entering the Oxford Dictionary in 2022. It’s July and not one but two of my children have had the isolation ping. Essentially, it’s a ping for me as well, 18 days of being homebound in the middle of the tri season. Farewell Eton’s Castle to Coast Triathlon, hello the paddling pool and the dusty turbo trainer.
The problem, aside from my failure to ever commit to turbo training no matter how many Zwift trials I’ve started, is the temperature is nudging 34°C and my breeze-starved patio is closer to Dante’s Inferno than Dorney Lake. Enter the SubZero range from Nopinz.
The Devon-based brand has form in ‘why hasn’t this been done before?’ moments when its race number pockets arrived in 2014. The SubZero range mirrors this simple yet effective approach to a common endurance sport problem. Namely, how do you remain at an optimum temperature on the turbo when a cooling fan just won’t suffice?
While many brands have created indoor clothing ranges loaded with Polartec fabric and open meshes, the SubZero range is the first to embed ice packs into the garments via a series of FreezePockets, which are located between the shoulder blades and on the lower back to reduce a rider’s core temperature.
The range includes SubZero bib shorts (£139.99), suits (£159.99) and wristbands (£29.99), and the good news is that it seemingly works, giving an effective cooling for around 20mins per pack and a psychological boost (there’s also an insulated case for ice pack spares that you can swap mid-ride, thus increasing the length of effectiveness).
The result is that it’s set to make indoor training that much more bearable, whether that’s midsummer or intense sessions in the spare room come winter. But can we expect to see this tech on outdoor suits in the future? And what has Nopinz learnt from years of working in pro cycling that can benefit triathletes? Time to head to Barnstaple to meet the brand’s brilliantly-named founder, Blake Pond…
While some have buzzy city centre locations (see Huub in Derby) and others are little more than rooms above cafés, most endurance sports brand headquarters are invariably located on suburban trading estates. Nopinz fall into the latter category but, while the architecture is indistinct, the location of Barnstaple in North Devon is unique. With the wide sands and open seas of Saunton close by, and both the Tarka Trail and South West Coast Path within touching distance, it’s a swim, bike and run paradise, highlighted by the mighty Croyde Ocean Triathlon we’re racing after visiting Nopinz (it’s also the home of prolific tri coach Joe Beer).
The location has inevitably shaped Blake Pond’s career since he moved west. “I moved to Devon from London when I was 14 and, as there wasn’t a huge amount to do for teenagers, I started cycling to my girlfriend’s house. That led to racing triathlons at Bude, Fowey and Perranporth, and I soon started racing semi-professional as a road cyclist and TT rider.”
Similar to top triathlete James Lock at Zone3, with whom Nopinz collaborated on the Aeroforce-X tri-suit range in 2020, Pond’s successful racing career informed the creation and direction of Nopinz. The demands of pointy-end training and racing have given him an awareness of what products worked and, crucially, where the sports tech fell down.
“Originally the Nopinz concept came in 2012 when I bought a Castelli Speedsuit. I pinned on my race number and heard that horrible ripping sound of fabric. Within a couple of weeks, I’d come up with the original Nopinz concept of a stick-on wallet with a pocket for a race number. I sketched the design and put it away in my kit drawer, but I kept returning to the idea. It took two years and my lifesavings to do it, but we started to sell the Nopinz products in 2014.”
THE HOLE TRUTH
When the first Nopinz product arrived in the 220 offices in late 2014, it was one of those ‘why hasn’t this been done before?’ moments to file alongside the Dryrobe (also based in North Devon). You’d go to a race and see athletes on a six-grand bike with deep-rim wheels and an aero tri-suit, and then hear this flapping race number behind them disrupting the aero gains. Research in 220 back in
2009 showed that a flapping race number added 27 seconds to a triathlete’s 40km time, with Pond’s own analysis mirroring this trend.
“We did a session with AeroCoach at the velodrome and in the Southampton wind tunnel, with one scenario being a 22-watt penalty of a badly pinned number. The numbers can be like parachutes on the skin-tight tri-suit. You’re essentially putting holes in your tri-suit every time you use safety pins, leaving it like a pin cushion, so our SpeedPocket offers longevity for tri-suits as well. The pockets had instant success and it was a surprise no-one had done it before. The best ideas are often ones that are right under our noses.”
The SpeedPocket was hugely adopted by the time-trialling fraternity, but having a swim and the frenetic affair of Transition 1 before the bike leg limited its appeal for triathletes. “We identified pretty quickly that the SpeedPocket wouldn’t really work for tri,” admits Pond. “The rules in tri are so diverse from race to race, with some not letting you wear a race number under your wetsuit, so finding a solution for everyone was tough. That’s why we developed our Tri Belt, which uses Velcro tabs to attach the belt securely to the suit.”
With the team’s collaborations with AeroCoach, Bioracer and Zone3, their aero products have been worn by top triathletes Josh Amberger and Michelle Vesterby, time-trial specialist Alex Dowsett, as well as Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas for Team Sky. They’re now aero partners with WorldTour cycling team Intermarché-WantyGobert Matériaux and there are plenty of partnerships that have remained secret. Something that Pond is hoping will change.
“I want full sponsorship of a WorldTour team when we can afford it instead of just being the aero kit partner for the time-trial stages,” Blake enthuses. “It’d be great to be at the forefront of every stage. It brings added credibility and it’s good to have our brand name there instead of athletes using white label versions of our products. It’s great to be able to celebrate our products instead of being hush hush about it.”
POND LIFE
Having conquered the world of TT (Pond says around 75% of UK time-trialists use Nopinz), Pond has long had his sights on planet tri. The brand’s Aeroforce-X trisuit with Zone3 should do that once racing fully returns, with that aerodynamically proven yet comfortable and customisable suit a giant leap forward for both Zone3 and trisuits as a whole.
“In cycling, if you can stand comfortably in a skinsuit then it doesn’t fit. But that’s no good for tri, when you might be running a marathon after six hours in the saddle. We were already working on developing our new propriety fabric for our new Flow range, so we were doing a huge amount of fabric testing. We’d become synonymous with TT, but we found the tri market hard to penetrate so the collaboration came at a good time for Nopinz.”
Even as someone who dreams of being at the pointy end of racing (not that aerodynamics don’t play a role for slower athletes), the Aeroforce-X
“I WANT FULL SPONSORSHIP OF A WORLDTOUR TEAM INSTEAD OF JUST BEING THE AERO KIT PARTNER AND ATHLETES USING WHITE LABEL VERSIONS OF OUR PRODUCTS”
is a suit I’d happily wear for racing. It’s also handmade in Nopinz headquarters right in front of me, with a small army of seamstresses and machinists creating aero outfits as we chat; a marriage of the old and new as sewing machines and cutting-edge laser printing tech vie for space on the factory floor. It’s here that the SubZero range is also being created before my eyes, with a neat touch being that each Nopinz garment comes with a tag displaying the name of the person who created it. Again, Pond’s life as a cyclist shaped the conception.
“A major limiting factor for me when indoor training has been overheating, especially doing intervals. If I ever bail out of an indoor session early, it’s because I’m too hot. So how do you stay cool? You can perforate shorts but we wanted something more radical, so we built ice inserts into clothing. All the inserts are located in areas where arteries are close to the skin, which helps with cooling. You can see the effect of a heat build-up on your heart-rate levels when training indoors and the numbers creeping up, but we’ve seen less cardiac drift when using the range in intense sessions. You can keep the same watts without your heart rate rocketing.”
And can we expect to see that 20 minutes of effective usage for each gel pack increase? “There are different constituencies of gels, while chemicals are being developed all the time to extend the usage. Much depends on how much heat you’re developing as well, as some athletes can get 30mins from a pack.”
FORWARD THINKER
As any triathlete who has experienced the Outlaw in 2013, Ironman France in 2019 or the Ironman Worlds in Kona (every year) will testify, a tri-suit with ice inserts wouldn’t go amiss, and is surely less cumbersome than the giant-sponge tactics utilised by Anne Haug at Hawaii in 2019.
“We actually made some cycling suits for the Olympics that have ice in them. The UCI rulings state that you can’t have fairings or gel packs, but we created ice moulds for some time-triallists in Tokyo, which involved putting their race suits in the freezer before the race. So we’re already taking the indoor tech out into the real world. The ice is even shaped to provide an aero advantage!”
Again, it’s the feeling of common-sense designs coming to the fore. Nopinz also displays a best of British narrative as well. Everything is designed and crafted here in Devon before being posted around the UK and the globe (Nopinz has a strong presence in Australia). Judging by the amount of orders heading out of the door and Nopinz having moved into bigger premises, it shows that British craftmanship can be a success. Not that Pond will be content with basking in the growth they’ve made since 2014.
“Clothing is still an area where large aerodynamic gains can be found,” he adds. “Ultimately, like everything new, technologies are continually being developed. Here at Nopinz, we’re continually developing faster clothing technologies. We already have our eye on the future.”
“WE CREATED ICE MOULDS FOR SOME TIME-TRIALLISTS IN TOKYO, WHICH INVOLVED PUTTING THEIR RACE SUITS IN THE FREEZER BEFORE THE RACE. THE ICE IS EVEN SHAPED TO PROVIDE AN AERO ADVANTAGE!”