Gear Review: Atayne POV Tech Shirt

By BRYON POWELL

The idea for Atayne (www.atayne.com), a new sports-apparel company in Arlington, Va., was sparked when red dye from a brand name running shirt unexpectedly bled onto company co-founder Jeremy Litchfield’s skin. Since then, Litchfield and his business partner Michael Hall have developed short- and long-sleeve technical shirts made from recycled plastic bottles that are free of toxic chemicals. They use natural Cocona (activated carbon from coconut shells) as a microbial inhibitor.

I tested Atayne’s short sleeve model at the tail end of Washington, D.C.‘s muggy summer, and I can attest that it wicks moisture adequately. After some use, it doesn’t smell any worse than technical shirts that are treated with silver or antimicrobial chemicals. In other words, it’s a fully functioning tech shirt that comes without the guilt of buying a virgin-petroleum-based shirt. A bonus is that the wearer is not exposed to any potentially nasty chemicals.

At first glance, the shirts appear to be well constructed, and in my test they’ve held up well. I ran many miles in Atayne’s short sleeve shirts, which come in green, blue, gray, and navy blue. They cost $38; the long-sleeve version is $44.

The company touts moisture wicking, UV protection, odor control and temperature regulating properties with its shirts. With great sweat-management and stink-fighting action, I might just take Atayne’s challenge to see how many workouts one can go without washing an Atayne shirt when I run the Marathon des Sables next spring.

Atayne’s Point of View (POV) line of shirts feature slogans like ‘Run Hard, Tread Lightly’ and ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Run.’ Kinda catchy, huh? Well, Atayne also walks the walk, having organized trash collection competitions at races. In the future, Atayne plans to take back used polyester-based performance shirts and give a $5 credit towards buying a new Atayne shirt as part of its cradle-to-cradle product model.

—Contributor Bryon Powell is an ultramarathon coach. He publishes iRunFar.com, a website for trail runners and ultramarathoners.