Let’s talk eyesight for a minute. Mine is terrible, I’m very nearsighted and without glasses/contacts I can’t hardly see past the end of my arm. For anyone familiar my contact prescription is -4.75/-4, this does not lend itself to doing any activity without some sort of corrective lenses. This is not a new thing for me, I’ve been dealing with glasses/contacts the 3rd or 4th grade I think. For the longest time though I wore contacts all the time, to the point I had friends who didn’t know I wore glasses.

That was up until a few years ago. I really started to struggle wearing contacts all the time. I cut back, but still pretty much always wore them for activities. I’ve tried doing activities in my normal every day glasses, but as soon as I start to sweat the glasses are terrible. They just slide all over. I’ve had a few different pairs, I’ve had them fit, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t work for me.

I finally decided I had to find a way to make wearing glasses while riding bikes work for me. My challenge has often been to get my prescription into a pair of glasses that were comfortable and good for athletics was tough. I started doing some legitimate research and looked around at a lot of different places. It seemed as though I was on the edge of being able to get a comfortable “normal” pair of sport sunglasses made into prescription glasses although there were some mixed reviews. The sport glasses often have pretty curved lenses that make larger prescriptions a challenge. I found a place called Sports Optical in Denver that had some good experience with this.

My first pair were some Oakley Half Jacket 2.0 with the Prizm Trail lenses. I was super excited to get these. I have to say the first few weeks with them were really rough. I felt like I was looking through a fishbowl. I wore them around a lot to try and get used to them. Even with that the first few rides were challenging and frustrating. I felt like I’d never ridden a bike before. I was all over the trail, I couldn’t “feel” anything, I hit everything, it was bad. It took a lot of patience. After a long time I finally got used to them though.

Since then, my contact usage has gone down even further and I’ve expanded my glasses selection. I’ve added a second set of lenses for the Oakley’s that are true sunglass lenses as well as a different pair of clear glasses. For the clear glasses I got a frame that has a little bit of a flatter lens. This seems to help a lot with the fishbowl effect. I wish I had gone with these frames for the other glasses as well. At this point I’m going to stick with what I have as each set of these lenses are not cheap.

Having real glasses that I can ride in and feel comfortable with has really made a big difference. I don’t have to fuss with contacts or deal with the excessive eye watering if it’s even mildly cold. However, the major drawback to this is that I’m dependent on the glasses. This has been an issue anytime it rains, particularly rain in a race. In a few occasions now I’ve been caught in heavy downpours during a race. The glasses inevitably fog and make it near impossible to see.

Now for race days it’s a conscious and important decision, what to wear. After the couple experiences in the rain I will almost always go for the contacts if there is more than a 30% chance of rain. All the times this happened in the past were near the top of gnarly descents (Pilot Rock, Bennet Gap, and Black Mtn for anyone familiar).

I’m really glad I finally found some glasses that work for me and bikes. I’d also like to give the folks at Sports Optical a big thanks, they’ve been really nice to deal with and have made some killer glasses.

If you’ve got a higher prescription and are considering looking at options let me know. I’m fairly picky about eyewear but enjoy talking about it.