HOUSE RULES
The only thing wrong with Rapha’s new indoor training gear is that it’s not radical enough...
Some mirth ensued online in December as Rapha unveiled its new ‘indoor training collection’, a fourpiece range of clothing designed for hard turbo efforts. It includes the £30 Sweat Cap (a casquette/sweat band), the £35 Sleeveless T-Shirt (a loose vest), the £95 (bib-less) Core Cargo Shorts and the £10 Towel (it’s a towel). The mirth was directed at the cost of the gear and the idea that a range of indoor cycling clothing even exists in the first place.
In regards to the latter, it’s high time that road cycling philistines accepted that indoor competition is here to stay. In 2020 there will, after all, be a world champion crowned in eRacing. There’s a growing market for indoor clobber and Rapha isn’t even the first to the party: Castelli, Shimano and Madison all got in there before it. Rapha’s new range apparently “over-performed forecasted sales”, which meant there was nothing left for us to test out!
On expense, yes, the cap seems high, but the rest seems typical of sports kit. Fair dos, £95 for shorts is a lot, less so if they’re up to the job. Turbo training might make an effective form of torture: your bike typically doesn’t move, out of the saddle riding is rare and all those forces are driven cruelly through your undercarriage. I’ve had friends say they use their cheapest, most expendable shorts for turbo training, but I argue the opposite. I want my most comfortable chamois for indoor sessions, it’s when you need it most. These Cargo shorts don’t have bibs because Rapha reckons they make you overly sweaty during indoor workouts, but I’m a believer in them, not least through winter, as they keep my postChristmas gut effectively shrinked-wrapped and in check. Out of sight, out of mind.
Indoor training game Zwift is often compared to a video game - and it’s true that for both I like to be comfortable. Just as I wouldn’t settle down for a session of FIFA on the PlayStation in anything other than loosely fitted clothing, I like the look of Rapha’s baggy, breathable tank top, even if there’s no pocket in it for my phone.
What about the cap? Cycling caps have always been a love/hate thing for me. My collection is vast. They formed a key part of the fancy dress polaroid corner at my recent wedding. So it’s a shame they tend to only come in one size and aren’t a good fit for my pumpkin-proportioned head, yanking up my eyebrows to the extent it looks like I’ve had a botched facelift. One-size-fits-almost-all. Head bands are a must-have turbo accessory, even if they do make me look like 1980s John McEnroe the further I get from my last haircut, but you’re perhaps better off getting one from Decathlon, where you’d get change from a fiver.
I’m all for indoor-specific gear - these days it’d get far more use than some of the winter clothing gathering dust in my drawer. My only problem with this Rapha collection is that it doesn’t go far enough. I like the bagginess of the vest, the sweatband in the cap and the hooks on the towel that fix to the hoods and keep it in place but the colours and design? It’s all far too muted, largely in black. There are no fashion rules to conform to when you’re cycling in your living room. If Mario Cipollini can get away with wearing a muscle suit at the Giro d’Italia, I should be able to loosen up my wardrobe for the turbo.
Then again, such fashion statements of the type Cipollini favoured were designed to draw attention. At home, you’d get little more than an eye-roll from your significant other. You can always channel your fashion impulses via your on-screen Zwift avatar. Casquette-wearing eWhitney’s currently sporting a confident all-pink outfit not seen since Alberto Contador last led the Giro, to go with the swine’s chiselled cheekbones and luxuriant facial topiary that I could only dream of cultivating in real life.
“There are absolutely no fashion rules to conform to when you’re cycling in your living room”