One of the things I learned that I loved about running was that I can be by myself. I know that this is not a very popular opinion and many people love running in groups but I’m personally not a fan of it. My big hang up with running with other people is that on days when I want to slow down or speed up, I feel like I have to keep a certain pace for the other person.

I mean, I could just ignore them but then I would look like a jerk… 

But I can’t deny that during my long runs it can get a bit boring. When I’m left alone with my thoughts, I can start dwelling on things and I’d rather not worry about these things when I’m running or biking. This is why music plays such a huge role in my fitness life. I can be by myself but still have something to distract me from the millions of thoughts running through my head.

First things first; I freaking hate wired headphones. I have lost track of how many times my arm catches the wire(s) and either yanks the headphones out of my ears or, worse, pulls my phone/device out and flings it across the floor.

Bluetooth headphones are my jam.

I don’t claim to be an audiophile so if you’re not into bluetooth audio and all of the tradeoffs that come with the technology, then read no further.

In hindsight I probably should have led with that… sorry…

My daily driver for running, biking, and general working out is the AfterShokz Trekz Titanium headphones. This model is an open ear headphone that works using bone conduction. I don’t know how much of that is legit and how much of it is marketing lingo but the main feature that I was looking for was the ability to listen to music while hearing my surroundings and this handles that use case without any issues. Being able to hear my environment is incredibly important for my safety - you never know when there’s a car turning the corner or someone in the gym carrying something heavy and needs to get by you.

These headphones are very light and stay put even with the most intense workouts. They are a behind-the-back style so nothing gets in your way as you’re working out. I’ve personally never had an issue with battery life either; I’ve gone a solid week without charging them and never ran into an issue. They are also IP55 certified so they can handle your basic sweaty athlete and rainy weather without any issues.

I paired them with my Apple Watch Series 3 (more about this in another post) and use the watch to play music through the headphones. This always worked for me without fail. The only thing that has not worked for me well is when I get a phone call through my watch and I try and answer it with the headphones (it has a built in microphone). Each time, the call quality was either terrible or the caller had trouble hearing me. However, to be very honest, I don’t know how much of that was the headphones or the watch. Since this is a very infrequent use case, I never really followed up on it and it never really bother me - your mileage may vary.

One major downside of the open-ear headphones is that loud noises can easily drown out any music playing through them. Once on a particularly windy run, I just turned off my music because I could not hear anything over the wind noise and I didn’t want to turn the volume too high. Another downside of bluetooth headphones is that you can only pair them to one device at a time (unless you’re using Apple’s fancy headphones). This means that if I wanted to use the headphones with my phone, I would have to go through the pairing process again, which I don’t bother doing.

As a self-proclaimed nerd, I usually try and get the latest and greatest tech as soon as I can justify replacing an existing item. With these headphones though, if I ever had to replace them, I would get the same ones again.

All products in this review were purchased with my own money and no one has approached me to do a review for them. My thoughts on the products are my own and do not reflect the thoughts or opinions of anyone else.

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