Kit Hacking - The Ommtanelight Frankenblazer 8 mk2

I prefer a rucksack to a race vest, particularly when training. A rucksack has a little more structure, but occupies a bit less space on your body. They're easy to take on and off to grab things out of the main compartment out on the hill, and are more practical to leave half/fully packed in the kitchen ready to head out the door.

These are two of my favourites. I've had the one on the right a few years. It's a Montane Trailblazer 8l. I wasn't sure about it to start with, it's not as minimal as I'd expect for a tiny running bag. It's an incredibly stable fit though, it sits squarely on my back and doesn't slide around thanks to the very clever double shoulder straps.

There are a few things I like less about it. I love the huge stretchy pockets you get on the back of UD Fastpacks (like the one on the left) for shoving food, waterproofs and hill litter in. The thing that I really find a pain on the Montane bag is the lack of a water bottle pocket on the front.

I've always just squeezed a 500ml bottle into the right hand zip pocket and left it slightly open, which bugs me. The latest version of the Trailblazer has a bit of fabric sewn into the zip pocket to make it a bit better to put a bottle in, but it still doesn't look that practical.

Partly inspired by my recent kit repair successes, and by something on Joe Faulkners website about customising kit, I decided to do something about it. So I carefully snipped off one of the zip pockets (recycling the zip puller for another project), and stitched on an "Omm-e-gami" pocket I had kicking around in the kit box. These are supposedly universal pockets that velcro onto rucksack shoulder straps, but they're no use for water bottles - the velcro comes loose and they fall off.

The resulting hybrid (which already had an old raidlight pouch sewn onto the shoulder strap to hold my keys) looks like this. So far the OMM pocket has worked fine for a 500ml UD water bottle.

Next step is to do something about mesh pockets on the back. I plan to remove the bungee and webbing, stitch the back up then put a big mesh pocket over the top. Then I might start hacking around the UD Blazek 10 that is also "almost but not quite just right".