A funny little tea-towell looking thing with a vicars collar arrived at the Wednesday Legs testing lab a few months ago, going by the name of Warmfront
Made in Colarado, it came with the promise:
“The Warmfront is a chest warmer, but it’s a better thermal base layer”
The Warmfront is made from a waffle fleece, which sounds delicious to a cyclist, is lightweight, and with the velcro tab collar, allows you to ride with it stadshed nice and neat in your back pocket without taking up much space. At 51g, you barely know it’s there.
When you ned it, it’s easy to whip it out, place down your front, attach the collar around your neck and wallah, off you go, down into the great known. Coming back from mid-summer riding in France a few weeks back to mid-winter riding in Adelaide was hard to take. Whilst we don’t generally get sub-zero temperatures, the Adelaide Hills can get awfully close, and throw in wind chill, it can be very uncofortable.
I popped out for a ride in the Superb Adelaide Hills (have I mentioned that before?) the previous weekend. Blue skys, no rain, halelulah. The route took me up Greenhill road, around to Mylor, up the 4 Whores, Morgan Road, Pole Road and wrapping back around to Redberry Cafe for a coffee with Mrs Wednesday and Wednesday Junior.
It was 5 degrees in Adelaide when I left, so assuming the usual 3 – 5 degrees difference at the top of Greenhill road, it was going to be a bloody cold ride, so with three layers and a Warmfront thrown into the rear pocket, I figured this would be a good test.
I’m glad I did – I robed up at the top of Greenhill road, and then spent the next three glorious hours cruising the Adelaide Hills comfortable not numb (showing my age there). The Warmfront worked a treat gliding down into Mylor, which for those in the know is one of the coldest spots in the Adelaide Hills. With the waffle on the front only, any heat buildup can escape on the back, so I didn’t need to remove it on the short sharp climbs in the hills. In fact, I was a littl econcerned that I would be pulling it on and off on the rolling Adelaide Hills, but I was quite surprised that I was able to keep it on for the remainder of the ride.
So my verdict, I was glad I had it with me and it’ll be with me on my winter Hill rides – highly recommended for those colder months riding in the hills.
The Warmfronts are distributed in Australia by Full Beam – see here for details on the Warmfront – Fullbeam
Oh, and this was some of the country side I rode through on that cold cold morning
Wednesday Legs 