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We all have our favourite gloves and knicks and for me it is was my very first set of lycra that I bought after watching Marco Pantani win the '98 Tour. I wore those Mercatone Uno Santini knicks and gloves until I got fed up with guys on training rides complaining about how "transparent" they were! In the years since I have had sat down on and worn many brands of knicks and gloves but until recently I had never worn clothing from Louis Garneau.
It was with great interest that I opened my post bag with Ergo Power Shorts (knicks) and Air Gel Carbon gloves. The first thing I noticed about the shorts was the stitching, it was very "skins like". The attached label explained this as being designed to "optimise muscle performance …. And 10% to 20% better resistance to fatigue". The insert was also very interesting with "perforations" and different thickness in different areas. No prizes for guessing that the thickest area was where your bum bones sit. As for the gloves on first sight the palm looks like something you would see on a motocross glove. But when you look closer you see that again, as in the shorts, the padding has variable thickness and is design for air flow. The back of the glove has a mix of lycra carbon, lycra and mircofibre.
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One of the most important things to consider is care of your gear, whether it is top quality like these or cheaper items. I always wash new gear before I wear it and use a "bra" bag when it is in the machine. For the guys out there a "bra" bag is a zipped bag that is designed to protect delicate items during the wash cycle. They can be purchased in a wide variety of clothing stores, so don't panic at the thought of having to go into "Bras and Things" to buy one! The other is to always close Velcro straps - this will stop them getting filled with lint while being washed and stops the exposed Velcro damaging lycra during the washing cycle.
When I first put on the gloves I though that they felt quite bulky. This disappeared quickly and I put it down to the $20 gloves I had been wearing of late. The shorts on the other hand felt like they were not there! The chamois did not feel like a nappy and the comfort of the lycra was something special. I did a couple of strange things with the shorts just to give them a good test. The first was I actually wore them around the house for a few hours under a pair of board shorts and the other was to go "nude" when on the bike. NO! Not that nude; I mean I did not use any chamois crème, which was something of a leap of faith for me!
When I eventually got out on the bike, I used the gloves and knicks on some training rides, races and also during some indoor spinning classes. Here in Mildura we describe our roads as hungry, others call them rough. The extra padding in the gloves was welcome and made for a comfortable sensation. The other thing with the gloves is that that they are really "sticky" - in a reassuring way. It is hard to say if the ventilation system works but I can tell you that I did notice my palms weren't sweaty even after a ride on a hot day. I had both small and medium to try and ended up using the medium. I wear gloves that are usually a bit tight but I found the medium the best even though they were not as tight as I normally wear.
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The shorts were a dream, full stop! I had to keep telling myself that these were actually bike knicks. My leap of faith with regards to the chamois crème was rewarded and for the first time in living memory I did not get soreness or rash, not even after a hot and sweaty 1 hour spin class. I can only put this down to the quality of the lycra and chamois and the technology packed into both. Very impressive!
So the Louis Garneau shorts and gloves get the thumbs (and bums) up from me. At $199 and $59 respectively they are expensive. But I think we all know which is going to last longer, these or 3 pairs of eBay specials.
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Dandenong
Warragul
