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It's important for all guys to have a few go to fragrances for a variety of different occasions! Whether it's something on the go between work and the gym or something special for an evening where you need to look and smell your best. I thought that I'd collate a list of my top 5 male fragrances (that I own) to give you a guide for your next choice. 
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In this instalment of City Runs, I spent the day in Paris. This city is absolutely gorgeous, it has so much charm. To be honest with you, I think if I dropped a pin in most places around the city, you'd have a pretty damn good City Runs for yourself. However, I've tried to give you the perfect mixture of architecture and nature, tourist spots and unknown gems. So here's my City Runs for Paris, France. For those of you who are new to my “City Runs” series, I visit different cities at home and abroad, giving some recommendations for the best places to run and keep fit. Hopefully this will inspire you to get you outside and give you a great active experience in that city, should you ever choose to visit..  In this edition of “City Runs” I made the most of the glorious British bank holiday weather and headed down to sunny Brighton for the day. Brighton is such a great option for a City run because it literally has so many different types of environment to exercise in. Whether you want, beach, city, or greenery there is something here for you. In this blog I’ll take you through my day in Brighton and where the best spots are to get your exercise fix. For those of you who are new to my “City Runs” series, I visit different cities at home and abroad, giving some recommendations for the best places to run and keep fit. Hopefully this will inspire you to get you outside and give you a great active experience in that city, should you ever choose to visit.   “City Runs” is a series that I’ve recently introduced to my blog. I visit different cities at home and abroad and give some recommendations for the best places to run. Hopefully this will inspire you to get you outside and give you a great active experience in that city, should you ever choose to visit.
In this edition of City Runs, I visited Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. You might be thinking Slovenia? Really? Hell yes, Ljubljana is a small city with huge personality. With a gorgeous river running through the centre surrounded by vibrant bars, restaurants and a huge castle, all within a two-hour flight from London, it’s the perfect weekend break with potential to be a great City Run. The dirt cheap return flights also help.  This is a new series that I’ll be adding to my blog. The aim of this and future posts will be to give you my opinion on what three different brand’s have to offer, at three different price points. I’ll give my recommendations on which, give you, the best bang for your buck. This post will look at 3 brand’s sportswear. Under Armour, ASOS and New Look are all featured, I’ve made a conscious effort to steer clear of Adidas and Nike in this post in order to give you something a little different. So let’s jump straight into it. Under Armour – £££ Training Fleece Half-Zip Sweat (Black) – £45  The half-zip is a style that I really like for any sportswear and Under Armour are a brand that do it really well. They have a wide variety of mid-layers. This is one of their more premium mid-layers and the quality of this piece of clothing is clear once you put it on. The detailing of the Under Armour logo on the back is also an example of the care that is taken with this top. During the cold weather, the fleece lining has been fantastic and makes this the perfect top to use outdoors or even travelling to and from the gym. This would have been a great alternative choice for my City Runs blog.   Training Threadborne Elite T-shirt (Green) – £19.50  This t-shirt is made from a stretch-breathable material, perfect for running in or as gym wear. I can imagine a few raised eyebrows at this one, and I wouldn’t normally choose a green camo top, but when I saw this in the sale I thought I’d go for it and I’m glad that I did. There is a clear quality to the top and with the style being something a little different it stands out from the crowd. ASOS (4505) – ££ 4505 Muscle Hoodie In 4 Way Stretch Jersey (Blue) – £38  A slightly cheaper option than the Under Armour mid-layer. With a full zip, hood and a material that feels similar to a scuba suit, this option gives a good mixture of style and function for half the price of a Nike or Adidas equivalent. I would definitely recommend the ASOS sports brand – 4505. This is my first sportswear purchase from ASOS and I’ve been pleasantly surprised and would definitely consider buying more from them with clear care taken to get even the smallest details right. However, for the extra £7 I think I’d still be tempted to plump for the Under Armour alternative.   4505 Compression Long Sleeve T-shirt with Seamless Knit – £20  This one went down very well in the Tapley household, with it apparently looking like something out of Batman according to my Mum. Not sure which batman film she’s been watching. This top is made of compression material and feels extremely high quality. It is, however, slightly too thick to be an under-layer, so you’ll have to wear it as a fashion choice, not just something you can wear under another top. If you prefer a bit more room to breathe and a looser fit, then perhaps this top isn’t for you. As you can see in the pictures, if you’re smuggling raisins when its cold, it will show. New Look – £ Navy Marl Crew Neck Sports T-shirt – £12.99  This is the perfect top if you need to pad out your wardrobe after just joining the gym. A safe, stylish and more importantly cheap option to get you started. Just getting into the gym or a new sport and need something to train in? Pick one or two of these up and it wont have set you back any more than a large pizza meal from Papa John’s. However, that’s as far as this will take you, if you’re a regular gym goer, into your sportswear or even just have the use of your eyes, I doubt this will cut the mustard for you. It just lacks that little bit of quality and care, with a bit of a boring design and loose threads, under close inspection it just comes up short. That being said, I stick with the opinion that it’s a good beginners choice. Black Running Shorts – £9.99  I expected these to be a little cheap and cheerful and I was correct. They aren’t going to win any awards for design looking like something you’d wear to your year 3 swimming lessons, but they’ll do a job for you. They’re a little baggy and don’t have zip pockets (which are in my opinion a must on sports shorts), but for £10, can you really complain? They’re comfortable, have lining inside for extra support and are pretty un-offensive. One word to sum these up…Meh.
Verdict – Under Armour – £££ The brand that I think offers the best value for money out of the items featured in this post has to be Under Armour. The quality is so far ahead of any of the other brands featured that I feel like although you’re paying slightly more for it (or in the case of new look nearly double), you’ll get so much more use out of it. That being said ASOS’s 4505 sportswear brand comes very close and if they could lower their price ever so slightly, then it may have pipped Under Armour. New Look need to up their quality, if they upped the durability and care given to their sportswear even with a slight price increase, they would be a very viable option. Let me know if you liked this blog and would like to see more of the Price Point series. A follow and a like on any social media would be greatly appreciated! I post regularly on social media with blog posts: Twitter: @matt_tapley Instagram: @matt_tapley  “City Runs” is a new series that I’m introducing to my blog. Throughout the series I’ll visit different cities at home and abroad and give some recommendations of the best places to run. Hopefully this will inspire you to get you outside and give you a great active experience in that city should you ever choose to visit. I’ll also go on the run that I’m recommending to you to make sure it is enjoyable, engaging and not some random route that can be plucked from the top of a search engine. I am effectively your guinea pig.
So to kick off the series, where better than London? I’m from Essex, so this is my closest city, therefore, I didn’t have to push the boat out too much with the budget for travel and after bribing a photographer (my brother), with the promise of tacos upon completion of his days work, I was set. With the abundance of parks and city scapes, London is full of great places to run. After some research and conversations with friends who live in London, I settled upon Regents Park. Regents Park Regents Park is a large area with winding footpaths, gorgeous nature and various running routes. It’s closest underground station is “Regents Park” on the Bakerloo line which pops you out opposite the park. The park actually has a map of all its possible running routes which I’ll insert below for you to take a look at.  With celebrities now making it an acceptable fashion choice to wear football shirts at non-sporting events, here are my hot tips for the best that the 2018 Russia World Cup has to offer you. It’s now only 100 days until the tournament starts and I can guarantee you that during the June-August period while the World Cup is on, you WILL see Drake wearing at least one of my choices. Here are the best of the bunch (some are still to be released and are leaked images). If only this style of fashion was acceptable when I used to wear my weirdest kit on non-uniform days at school, man that Leeds United kit did not go down well…
Belgium – Home  If you play any sport, you know that there aren’t many feelings better than getting some brand new equipment, especially as a kid (sometimes at great cost to my parents, suckers…) As I was packing my bag before my football match this weekend, I placed my boots in and realised that I have had a lot of pairs during my relatively short playing career. So I thought, why not take a look back over some of the best of the bunch. A warning to all you purists, this list may contain bright coloured boots. So if seeing a pair of orange boots on a Sunday morning is like a red rag to a bull for you, then you may be disappointed in me. However, there are certainly some absolute classics on this list. Here’s a list of the top ten boots that I’ve owned. 10: Adidas Predator Power Swerve  Now, I realise that these boots may not be the most memorable for a lot of you. However for me they are extremely memorable, although for the wrong reasons. I had these boots for all of one week, after wearing them to a training session or maybe a game I’m not sure, I left them on the door step to dry out. The next morning as I was about to leave to go to school I found the tattered remains of my brand new boots that had been nibbled by a fox. Gutted. That being said after finding a picture of these boots for this post I was surprised at how damn good they looked but even so these had to make it on to the list for that stupid fox alone.
9: Nike Air Zoom Total 90 II |