You finished your long run. You hit your distance. But the chafing you felt from kilometre 6 onwards? That wasn't your body failing you. That was your pad.
But here's what stops most women cold: there is no ingredients list on a pad box. Not because there's nothing in there — but because brands aren't required to tell you. So most never do.
You have already dialled in your shoes, your shorts, your socks. You know that the wrong material in the wrong place ends a run early. Yet the one product sitting closest to your skin on every long run is still the same plastic-backed pad. No one told you there was another option.
We scrutinise the cloth against our wrist but not the pad against our body. We read the back of a shampoo bottle but not the pack of tampons in our bathroom. The gap isn't small — it's astonishing. And brands have counted on that gap for decades.
So what is actually inside the pad that has been rubbing against you on every long run?
