What do you do if by nature you are a warm person and don’t suffer in the cold weather?
For many the normal route would be to continue with their normal shorts and combine these with either knee warmers or leg warmers. Maybe you need a warm persons cold weather bib tight, enter the Xenon, could this be your solution. The Xenon bib tights are a full-length offering but unlike many winter options these negate the use of a roubaix material. Gore has utilized the same fabrics that were first used in the Xenon Windstopper jersey. Just to be clear, they do not have the Windstopper membrane sandwiched between the layers, so this doesn’t result in a super foul weather bib tight. The use of this lightweight fabric surprisingly gives enough warmth right down to the 2 degrees mark, but combined with any wind chill will struggle below that.
The Xenon range of products uses a complex multi array of panels and fabrics to create the desired mission brief. These panels boost fit and in this case allow for a double thickness of material to be added over the sensitive knee joint. The stirrup area is made of a lycra, which is no bad thing, as thing area still requires freedom of movement, particularly if you are wearing bulky winter socks and/or overshoes.
Normally I would shun a winter tight that has a pad permanently sewn into it, as you never seem to be able to get the pad to sit right. Thankfully this was not the case and I put this down to the panelling. Another major flaw that some manufacturers fall into the trap of doing is specking a cheaper, lower performance pad and keeping quiet about it. Yet again another plus point that Gore decided to use an unchanged pad from the Xenon short. Dave Arthur @ RCUK tested these back in the summer of 2007 and said “Comfortable, comfortable, comfortable, pricey but in Assos-territory, one of the best chamois we've tested”. Having been able to spend some serious time riding this chamois I have to agree it’s a great thing to perch your bum against on a long ride, definitely up there with the top offerings available.
As with all Xenon products you need a little more dressing time due to those ergonomic panels. Upon every outing I needed to adjust the tights to get the seams into the correction position. Operation performed once was enough to last the duration of the ride and once riding all the attention to detail all makes sense. The bib has a small zip that makes those calls of nature a lot easier to perform. Also present is the reflective block pattern to aid visibility while at the same time avoiding the lycra visual pollution that using fluro colours would induce.
Conclusion
All in all this is a great autumn/early winter tight. Due to the close compression style fit they urge you to go faster and this has been aided by making the bib tight light and warm and so makes a great training garment. For the epic conditions you can also buy a Windstopper version with the same pad if you feel the cold.
www.gorebikewear.com
