A trip around New Zealand
The winters officially started, while I’m sat here writing this blog outside the rains lashing against the windows and the sun never quite rears its head, and to top it off yesterday was the first day of a thick frost. Its days like this when venturing outside on the bike doesn’t seems quite as appealing as it did why back in the summer. A summer that already feels a light year away when all you needed to kit up was shorts and a jersey. This time of year you need that extra little push, that bit of encouragement to get out the door.
Luckily for me that little bit of push came in the form of a some fresh winter clothing, here was an excuses to get kitted up and see what a grim British autumn could throw at a few pieces of the new Castelli winter range.
Please don’t read this as review blog, that would be foolish. You guys out there just wouldn’t take it serious. A Castelli blog reviewing Castelli clothing! Nope, instead I’ll just pick a few pieces that have stood out from the array of goodies that arrived to get me through the winter and beyond.
First up is the Muur jacket, a piece that I can see getting a lot of abuse this winter. The eVent fabric looks almost space age in its silver colouring. This jacket sits just below Castelli’s top of the range rain jacket, the Pocket Liner. The great thing is that both use the same eVent fabric. A fabric that, so I’m told is exclusive to Castelli. It’s cut is 100% designed to be used on the bike, the close fit eliminates flapping, a drop tail, high neck and long sleeves keep you well covered from the eliments.
It’s easy to see that the guys at Castelli’s design offices have put the hours in on making this as “bike fit” as possible. When standing in it, it just feels slightly out of place, it scrunches where a standard jacket wouldnt. The thing to remember is to get in that cycling position when trying it on in your local bike shop, this is when the penny drops and the jacket feels as its at home. A simple idea but an idea many manufactures overlook.
The same goes for the toasty warm Espresso Due 2 jacket, this is one piece of kit that will keep anyone warm on a cold winters day. I’ve already been out in temperatures that have dropped to 4 degrees in the this. All that was needed underneath is a thermal long-sleeved undershirt.
As the saying goes “the devil is in the detail” and the detailing on the jackets second to none. Its the first jacket I’ve had thats incorporated sleeve vented zips. These surprised me, I had jackets with vents on the chest, pit, and back before but I was amazed at how well the two slim vents on the wrist area worked at cooling the body. I really hope to see this on future Castelli jackets.
If your lucky enough to live in an area where winters not too severe than the Transparent Due Wind jersey could be what your looking for, a simple sleek jersey again in a race fit cut. This though has the added benefit of Gore’s Windstopper X-Lite Plus fabric placed on the front of the chest, shoulders, upper arms and splash guard section on the derrière. This is what I’d class as a new generation long-sleeved jersey.
I’d always stuck with a trusty standard brushed Roubaix lining type jersey, the sort of thing that everyone has in their winter wardrobe. A simple warm jersey and when used with a gilet iWork’s well enough.
After the first outing with the Transparent Due Wind jersey on my back it just showed me that you can have as much technology in a simple long-sleeved jersey as you get with these lightweight, areo fit, short sleeved jersey that you use in racing or on the epic long summer rides. This I felt was a piece that is going to be hard to top in the future. I’m sure a few pros on the Garmin-Sharp team would agree with me. Hell! I bet some of them had a little bit of input when developing this jersey.
The only real problem with this jersey though is that I don’t have two, its on constant rotation between myself and the washing machine. And while I on about the washing machine, each of the pieces I’ve talked about still look day-one fresh.
I know at the start of this blog I was going to write about a few stand out pieces, the problem is that there is quite a few stand out pieces. Rather than continue this blog with the fear of boring you, I figure I’ll save the rest for the future. Tights and the bits that keep them extremities warm and dry I’ll save for another day. But in the mean time I hope you’ve enjoyed this blog and not seen it as some marketing blurb.
