Winter Cycling Clothing

Josh Ross

Fall to Spring, Head to Toe, The Clothing You Need To Stay Comfortable. A personal list of all the items you need to see you through the off season and, if we’re honest, you’ll probably be grateful for on some of our less than perfect summer days.

Many of the articles I bring you involve looking for cool products and seeing if they actually work. Do they do what they say they do, and does it make sense to buy? This time I’m doing something a bit different. I’m going out on a bit of a limb and putting together a recommended list of clothing to keep you warm and comfortable all the way from the beginning of fall to the end of spring.

Before I get too far into it, though, I want to set some general guidelines as far as what I’ll cover. I’m bringing this to you from Portland, Oregon in the US, and we’ve got weather that seems to mirror that of London to a great extent. That means lots of rain in the winter and cold weather but typically not a lot of snow. (London gets a bit more snow.)

I also personally have limits to the weather I ride in. I know people who will ride pretty much no matter what, but that’s just not me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no off-season. But what I do have is a set of rollers. There are times when I just don’t bother going out. The limits I’ve placed on this article are a bottom temperature of 40 degrees fahrenheit(4 deg C). Below 40, if it’s dry and sunny, I might try. But it is often dangerously windy in the winter when we’ve got dry, but cold, weather. And as it starts to approach freezing, we are bound to have thick sheets of ice in Portland.

I realise that 40 degrees isn’t exceptionally cold, but that’s about my limit before I head inside. On the other hand, I will go out in driving rain. For one thing, if I completely avoided rain, I’d never ride past late summer. But even when I don’t feel like braving the rain, I often end up in the rain. The weather changes fast around here and heading out with grey skies could mean coming home in sunny weather, or it could mean coming home in driving rain. You just never know. So those are the limits I’m putting on the article. If you ride in weather outside of those limits, you can certainly find solutions, but for me, I head inside. … Read More >