The Sixth Sense

Far less glamorous than I've made it sound in the title, but every cyclist will know what I mean. The issue is I've lost it, and am now engaged in the cold and/or sweaty process of getting it back.

Having had a few months off regular training hours, I’ve realised I’ve lost my intuition. No, I’m not talking about my ability to read a race, nor to take the best line through a corner. I’m talking about that gut feeling that tells you what kit you need to wear for a given day’s conditions. You know, that unspoken sense of how many layers will lead to the perfect body temperature, calculated simply by putting a hand out the window.

I’m lucky enough to get a small mountain of kit every January from our team sponsor, Cuore (which, even with a little sponsor bias considered, I think is the best quality kit I’ve ever used). When digging through the hillock of multi-coloured garments that I dumped out onto my bed, I could find every kind of piece of kit one could possibly need, as well as others that border on the excessive. Short-sleeved thermal jersey, long-sleeve thermal jersey, extreme weather jacket, thermal gilet, wind-proof gilet, rain cape, rain jacket (I can confirm those two are, in fact, different), not to mention several different types of skinsuits and numerous pairs of shorts and jerseys of differing varieties. And the socks - I can’t even count how many of them there are. It’s a pretty high-class problem to have, to make a choice between the various different combinations of similar, yet ever so slightly different types of garb that I’ve got the luxury of being given.

Every colour on the spectrum on show.

This abundance of colour-coordinated kit creates quite a discussion on the bus before a cold, wet race. “What are you going with?”, “Leg warmers or not, what do you reckon?”, “Will we have someone at km X to take a jacket?” are just some of the questions that echo around. It’s probably a manifestation of nerves, or everyone’s inner middle-aged man coming out to talk about the weather. Nine times out of ten, it really doesn’t matter, because whatever you wear is soaked within five minutes anyway, so you resort to “just pedal harder”. So much for using energy efficiently.

As experience of riding a bike in a variety of weather conditions is built up over the years, so too does the intuition of what kit to wear in each scenario. It becomes a sort of unspoken sense. One day may just feel like a thick gilet and knee warmers outing. Another could give off the vibe of nothing covering the lower legs, but the sneaking suspicion that you may need a gabba in the back pocket. Lo and behold, quite often that sense is right.

With a few months when the regular honing of that unspoken ability has been on hold, I’ve found myself making the wrong choices clothing-wise on multiple occasions. Ok, in Ireland it was pretty easy. It was either 5 degrees and dry, or 5 degrees and wet. Not a massive variety there - in both weather and day-to-day clothing. I’ve now transferred from one island with large numbers of unwelcome Brits to another, but seem to have brought the weather with me. I’m in Mallorca for the final month or so before I take to the delayed start of my first race of the year and currently, Spain isn’t really Spaining.

Excuse the mouthful of jelly babies.

That’s created a slight conundrum. I’ve got all four seasons everyday day twice over. This provides a bit of a challenge for my rusty “hand out the window test”. Often it’s damp and cloudy, but hour one of the ride sees me having grossly underestimated the temperature and stripping off in a layby to the bemusement of passing traffic. The opposite is true as well. I’ve been fooled by the sun (admittedly in a very British way) and headed out the door dressed for the beach. Only to find myself whipping out the emergency rain jacket because I’ve made a grave mistake.

It all creates quite the serious issue, as you can probably imagine (heavy sarcasm intended). The unspoken sixth weather sense has to be treated like a dog, you see. Brute force alone won’t work in training it. A careful balance between the carrot and the stick seems to be the only course of action if I’m going to be able to once again tell the exact number of layers simply by waving a hand around in circles outside just after breakfast. Failing that, I can just keep unzipping every layer I’ve got on and reverse the thousands spent on aerodynamic and cooling research by Cuore because I can’t dress myself for hot weather. For the cold on the other hand, I guess I’ll just pedal harder.