The Clothing Debate 1

An area of debate within the cycling-to-work world is clothing. Should you wear what you work in, or change, and if you change should you wear “cycling kit” or just a different teeshirt? There are good arguments on each side and, in fact, this very blog brings you representatives from both camps. So in the nature of a good debate we can offer the broadest swathe of opinion.

I strongly represent the wearing cycling kit to ride (and if only I could use this as a sneaky place to plug all my favourite kit in exchange for freebies and sponsorship I’d be laughing!). To fully set out my stall in the marketplace of debate I should, I feel, tell you what that involves, without delving into the depths of some sex-line-esque description. So on a normal day I’ll wear (from the top down) a helmet (with peak to stick to my mountain bike sensibilities and also decorated with mud), sunglasses (by the best name in plastic sunnies starting with an “O”) and a cycling top to reflect the weather in terms of how hot, or cold it is. This is teamed with a thermal base layer under the top in the cold or a waterproof over the top if it’s really wet (or both if it’s properly freezing). I wear full finger gloves and then the type of baggy shorts with a cycling inner (the streets of London at 9:30am are no place for lycra shorts). I also wear cycling shoes, and this is where my justification begins.

In running clipless pedals (you know – the ones with clips) on my bikes I have to wear shoes to suit them, and if I’m going to have to change my shoes I might as well change everything else, right. I hate riding far in jeans, and I have the kit to wear so I might as well swap it all, rather than just wearing a different teeshirt and changing it at work. Whatever the weather I can be comfortable at work in dry clothes (whether the ones I rode in are wet from the inside or the outside), and can be more comfortable on the ride, and faster, as well as not wearing my jeans out in the key saddle-friction areas. I can carry clothes for the day in a rucksack and even be suitably dressed for a cheeky after-work beer as well. Obviously it helps that I work somewhere where jeans and a teeshirt is acceptable office wear, but even if I didn’t it would still be easy, and better for my work colleagues who don’t have to sit next to someone still dripping with sweat at 3pm.

Obviously stopping off anywhere on the way home isn’t too easy not being in normal clothes, but with no lock weighing my bag down either it’d be risky to stop anywhere I couldn’t still touch the bike, and you look reasonable dressed to ride if you have a bike right with you, don’t you?

The only issue really is shoes. Shoes are a lot bulkier than you think. Unless you’re a girl and have those barely-shoes shoes, they don’t fit too well in a bag. I’m not a girl so I have to leave them at work, and the shoes you leave at work are never the best ones. Let me demonstrate:



These could be seen as classic DCs, originals from a design classic of the early 21sc Century (is there such a thing), or as trainers that should have been relegated, to days out where they might get wet, a while ago. Although there not much good in the wet any more as you can see from underneath;



(Please note the other cycling paraphernalia under my desk)

In essence I’m stuck with the shoes I can’t be bothered to take home from work every day, or an expedition to make sure I have better shoes in work – and then they wouldn’t be at home for the pub or anywhere else. I guess there’s more wear in them yet, and when I get round to buying new nice shoes the current nice ones will get moved to work. It still doesn’t solve the problem of when I have to go to the office which has a dress-code. That’s a whole other pain.

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