Congratulate yourselves. Against all the odds, you’ve made it to the end of January without spontaneously combusting due to ingesting too much rubbish weather and awful news. Like running up an escalator the wrong way, scaling January, at times, seemed both idiotic and impossible. But here you are, at the summit, looking down on Mordo….February. Your endorphins are MIA, Vitamin D levels are on life support and the bank account is flat-lining, but you’re just about alive.
Luckily, we can always be thankful for cycling. Whether you’re doing it, thinking about (or not thinking about) doing it, or just talking (or typing) about it – even in Jan…February, it shall sustain us. Looking at the cyclist.co.uk home page is a good way of telling me it’s winter without telling me it’s winter. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks in and out of rain jackets, some warmer than others, reluctantly hoping for rain and then being annoyed when it arrived. I’ve reviewed an excellent Q36.5 shell, Rapha’s recent Gore-Tex offering, Poc’s gossamer light ghost of a coat, Velocio’s deep winter snug, Le Col’s hooded gravel layer and Godfather of the wet weather kit world, Gorewear’s Spinshift Gore-Tex Jacket.
Our commander-in-chief Pete Muir broke the bleak news that Eurosports’ coverage of cycling will – in the UK at least – be ending for good next month. Interested viewers will have to fork out for an expensive TNT subscription or make do with a weekly free-to-air show. Couldn’t they have saved that announcement for February at least? Ewan Wilson tries to find the positives (spoiler, there aren’t many).
Elsewhere on the site, Robyn summarised the pro peloton’s weekly goings on in Pro Log and Ewan also investigated what the prospective OneCycling project would actually mean for the sport. For winter maintenance, our evergreen derailleur adjustment guide is live, while the very smart Factor Ostro VAM bike review has gone online too.
Alrighty roo, let’s hit the ejector seat on January and plunge safely into the drops. So long you hideous beast – see you in 2026.
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Continental 5000 AS TR tyres
As Rubicon kit moments go, I think buying my first set of Conti 5000s was when I started to consider myself a ‘proper’ cyclist, whatever that means. Admittedly, managing to surmise that one of the most popular tyres available was a worthwhile investment didn’t make me some kind of bike thought-leader, but I sure as hell felt legit rolling out on those thoroughly reliable ebony hoops.
This All Season (AS) variety adds some heft and resilience to what was already a pretty street-wise tyre. The Black Chili Compound is ported over from the GP5000s to reinforce the tyre’s rubber, as is Vectran puncture protection. Conti compares the latter to spider silk, as it’s a liquid-crystalline polymer said to provide high tear resistance at a very low weight.
An upgrade to the GP 4-season tyre, the AS is grippier, has tougher sidewalls and – in this colour – features a hidden reflective strip, similar to the one so familiar from the bomb-proof Schwalbe Marathons (see the easy-to-miss panel pictured below.) Grey and unremarkable to the naked eye, once it catches the flicker of a headlight it lights up and dazzles like a rabbit’s pupils.
The tax for these improvements is a bit of extra weight (total heft is 335g in 28mm), but other than that, they could easily be mistaken for their less rugged sibling the GP5000 S TR.
Once into the winter months and surrounded by ice, rain and the slow ingress of creeping gloom, I really couldn’t care less about going fast. I do, however, care deeply about spending as little time as possible standing in wet lanes fixing punctures with frozen hands. With that firmly in mind, these bad boys have gone straight onto my winter bike and won’t be coming off until the sun cream comes out.
- Buy now from Continental £94.96
Grangers Apparel Performance Wash
Having gone deep down the PFAS-free rain jacket rabbit hole over the past few weeks and months, I'm well aware that the new generation of membrane-based materials – whether that be Gore-Tex, Pertex, or Polartec – require more maintenance than their pollution-heavy predecessors.
It seems that each brand's garments are different. Counterintuitively, some actually require tumble drying at a high temperature to reactivate their waterproof treatment – something I struggle to commit to, even when the experts are telling me it makes sense.
But what they all seem to require, to some degree, is careful washing with an approved detergent. Rapha actually sells Grangers' products in its stores, which seemed like as good a recommendation as any.
Each bottle of Performance Wash provides 12 washes, and you can buy it in a gigantic five-litre jerry can if you and your rainwear are getting absolutely filthy on the regular or you happen to be a kit person at Paris-Roubaix.
It is PFC-free, Bluesign approved, and Grangers says it eliminates odours and removes dirt and residue from the water-repellant membrane. Play your cards right, and it should keep your fancy rainwear working as intended for many years to come.
- Buy now from Grangers for £7.25
Rapha Black+Blum Insulated Cup
Useful as this cup is, it makes me think it would've been absolutely excellent during the pandemic, when cafes were few and far between on cold rides and you had to open an app just to step over the threshold and get your hands on something hot.
Regardless, with that generation-defining disaster now firmly in our rear mirror, the Rapha Black+Blum Insulated Cup is proving its worth this season. It's vacuum-insulated and made from stainless steel, with Rapha claiming it will keep your coffee warm for up to five hours.
Its bottle-cage sizing means it's cycling-specific, and because it's easy to operate with a single gloved hand, you can literally drink hot americano while puffing your way to work or around your local lanes. Brave new world that hath hot portable coffee in it.
- Buy now from Rapha (£30)
Myomaster MyoPro Massage Gun
Time's scythe is coming for us all, but that doesn't mean we can't employ every tool known to man to try and slow its pernicious approach. Stretching and strengthening have long been a part of my pre- and post-ride routine, but I never have the energy or inclination to give myself an effective rub down to delete any lingering niggles after a hard ride. For a while, I tried to be religious in my use of the foam roller, balancing my glutes and hamstrings over this ridged rolling pin after every ride. But again it was too inconvenient to become habitual.
The Myo Master massage gun from MyoPro really does leave me with no excuses. This comprehensive recovery weapon shoots out vibrations in a manner the brand has trademarked as Ripple Effect. Apparently, the way the vibrations travel through the entirety of the muscle helps to lengthen tissue, increase blood flow and provide pain relief. Helpfully, MyoPro sends out how-to videos from a trained physiotherapist so that you can use the gun correctly, and without injuring yourself.
I'm working through some annoyingly persistent Achilles tendinitis at the minute that refuses to fully heal, so the MyoPro has been helpful for giving the surrounding area some gentle relief. It's possible to cycle the gun through many different settings, with the highest one chucking out a pretty manic level of vibration. Good for aching muscles and siphoning off lactate, or maybe even punching through thin doors. The Myo Master has been most effective when used straight after rides, giving my quads, calves and hamstrings a quick pummelling, which really does alleviate any next-day stiffness.
MyoPro is keen to emphasise how quiet the gun is and I can't disagree. Even set to the most hectic setting, it still only emits a faint buzzing noise that I was comfortable watching telly over without attracting censure from my cohabitors. The eight interestingly shaped attachable heads offer different types of massage for different areas of the body, and different levels of injury. (I think The Bull was my personal favourite.) The head can shoot out 60lb of force to a depth of 14mm, which MyoPro says is the optimum depth for this kind of massage.
- Buy now from MyoMaster (£300)
What we're into this week: The Basso SV
I've never shoehorned a test bike into In The Drops before. Still, it's January (did I mention that?) and the sum total of my extracurricular activities amounts to watching The Traitors and drinking Guinness 0% like it's tap water. With that in mind, I'm going to make an exception for the Basso SV.
Basso invited a group of cycling journalists out to Bassano del Grappa last year for some presentations about the Sempre Veloce's development and gave us the chance to put this new featherweight bike through its paces on some soggy north Italian tarmac. On that occasion, I was loaned a pleasant enough black and white model which did just fine in the, at times, hideous conditions.
But things are different this time. For a longer-term test, I've been sent the Viola Galaxy colourway, which, as you can see, is quite something. The coruscating melange of blues, oranges, golds and purples that jump off the frame don't seem to sit still. Each passing cloud or Jacob's ladder sets off another fizz of refraction, creating colour blends that are gone again in an instant. Most of the time the SV lives in my home office, near the window, under lock and key and wrapped in a mink shawl, but I make sure to leave the door open so that I can check what the paintjob is up to each time I walk past.
While this shade-shifting watercolour bike might not be great for picking matching kit (out comes my all-black wardrobe from five years ago), it makes a nice change from the dearth of meh colourways kicking around the industry these days. Basso designers: I salute you.
Stay tuned for the full review.
- Buy now from Chicken Cycle Kit
