The commute is transport, not training. Wear what you were going to wear, add the layer that keeps you dry and the one that keeps you seen, and arrive as yourself.
We say this over the counter most days, usually to someone holding a pair of padded shorts they do not need. Cycling kit was designed for people going as fast as they can for hours. A ride to work is twenty or forty minutes at a talking pace with a bag on. Those are different problems, and dressing for the wrong one is why so many people feel they cannot ride to work.
What actually goes wrong on a commute
Almost nothing on a normal ride needs special clothing. Four things do.
- Rain. A shell with taped seams and waterproof zips, and fenders so the road does not paint a stripe up your back.
- The dark. From November you ride home without daylight. You need to be obvious to drivers without looking like a road crew.
- Cold hands. Warm hands brake better. Cold ones fumble.
- Wet feet. Nothing ruins a meeting like damp socks.
That is the whole list. Everything else is the clothes you already own.
Kit you can walk in wearing
This is why we make the pieces we do. The Jacket covers the first two at once: taped and waterproof, gray by day and silver in headlights, with a dropped hem for leaning over the bars and room for a sweater underneath. Hang it up at work and it looks like a coat.
The Gloves have grip-printed palms, touchscreen fingertips and a reflective strip across the knuckles, where a driver sees your signal. The Shoe Covers pull on over the shoes you are wearing and roll small enough to forget until it rains. The Cap sits under the helmet and is the bit you keep on indoors.
If you want the lot for the dark months, the Winter Kit is the Jacket, the Gloves and the Shoe Covers for $185, against $197 bought apart.
A test for any piece
Before you buy anything for the ride, cycling or not, ask one question: would I be happy to be seen in this at my desk? If not, it had better be doing something important on the way there.
As one regular told us: nobody at work knows he cycled in. That was the whole idea.
