MATTER: Castelli’s Polare 3 Winter Bib-tights
It's the the last Saturday of November, and I've opted to ride outside rather than the trainer in my basement. Again. I'm putting off stationary riding as long as I can.
Turning north immediately activates my internal dialogue, mostly expletives strung together with little else… unless you count exasperated breathing.
The wind does its best to convince my forehead it shouldn't have even considered showing up. The thin strip of bare skin below my winter cap, partially shielded by my glasses, receives a concentrated, steady blast of cold, humid air; it's -8C, and wind chill is real.
"This is awful. Maybe I made the wrong call. Should I just turn around and ride inside?"
I guess a lot of riders would have turned back home. I didn't, but probably not for the reason you might think, or think I want you to think: I'm just tougher than most. I don't know how many people I'm tougher than, or less tough than. I do know, however, that I have a lot more winter cycling experience than almost anyone I know. I've been riding all winter for more than 30 years, and over those years I've experienced a lot of painful cold. My forehead has frozen at the start of numerous, and I never turned back. Each of those rides saw my forehead sort of 'magically' adjust to the cold; the problem never persisted for more than 15-20 minutes. With that experience in my pocket, I chose to keep riding, again.
I don't want you, dear reader, to have shitty experiences riding bikes. Sharing the principles I've learned, and supporting decision making that leads to great riding experiences for you, in even the harshest weather, is my objective. Cycling is hard enough when we have guidance, coaching, and mentorship; I hope to help you avoid learning the hard way if we can avoid it. At the very least, I hope to help you avoid spending money on soft and hard goods that leave you disappointed or discouraged.
This piece blends ideas about how to think about winter's phases in relation to your riding requirements, with a focus Castelli's warmest leg protection, the Polare 3 bibtight. The principle / theoretical material is relevant to all winter kit selection and performance, though some body parts are more challenging to manage than others. Each of my MATTER pieces in this domain addresses specific nuances.
Monolithic
Even for a given geographical location, winter is amorphous. For those closely connected to the land, winter unfolds in phases. For the Sami people of Scandinavia, Tjakttjadálvvie refers to 'early winter,' and Dálvvie denotes 'real winter' (Brunner 9). Having grown up in Ottawa, Canada, playing hockey on outdoor rinks, skiing and snowboarding, then fat biking and riding on snirt roads, I've often found myself making the same distinction. Here, we have real winter. It doesn't extend as long as some folks think, and its phasing shifts, but once it sets in, you know it. Please don't think I'm blowing smoke when I say cycling through real winter is far more beautiful and rewarding than early winter. It's an experience I hope to see folks increasingly try and grow to love too.
When folks write me from all over the world about kit tips (which is mostly around harsh weather pieces), my answers are rarely short and sweet. These exchanges inform what goes into what I write here. Quality cycling kit is expensive, and Castelli offers many options that overlap in use-range; my aim is do what I can to guide decision-making toward fantastic riding experiences, and away from disappointment. The way I try to guide good decision making is by juxtaposing key principles, priority identification, geographical and weather nuance, and budget. Most of the time, winter pieces are approached as 'investments,' core enabling pieces. If/when I do this well, the subsequent questions I receive become increasingly specific, around matters of compromise.
Early Winter Conspires
The nuance I've been thinking about more and more over the last few years of consistent road and snirt riding through early and real winter is that humidity and acclimatization are somewhat paradoxical in my region. Humidity levels fluctuate over space and time: some regions are humid across all seasons, others dry; I'd speculate that most see humidity vary considerably. In my region, humidity is high through summer, and tends to stay elevated through fall and early winter. Once real winter sets in, humidity drops, then generally remains low through spring. It's not uncommon to have a dry mouth while riding in April. This always feels odd, given snow still tends to be melting.
Humid air is effectively less dense than dry air. It combines two devilish properties that conspire to chill us: humid air permeates clothing more easily than dry, and it conducts (sucks, steals, pulls, wicks) heat away from our bodies more effectively too. Just as people say dry heat is easier to handle than humid, dry cold is easier to handle than damp.
The temporal phasing of humid cold conditions in early winter aligns with that of acclimatization. This introduces an overcompensation feedback loop I'd like to dwell on for a moment.
In early winter, while humidity is high, acclimatization is still low. As temperatures swing around through fall and into early winter, our bodies struggle to adjust. The first 'cold' days of early winter don't tend to actually register very low on the thermometer, but they feel really cold because we're not yet acclimatized, and the air is humid. It's a double-whammy, and I suspect many riders are scared off winter riding because they imagine it'll always feel like these early winter days: bitterly cold. Recall my forehead story: in the absence of significant experience, we can be easily misled. In regions where humidity drops as winter marches on (which is more common than not), the happy truth is that -10C can and does often feel much more tolerable in January than -2C does in November. Wind speeds tend to drop as it gets colder too; fall and spring are the windiest seasons in my region.
Dance with it
The trick, and what requires some experience-building, is transitioning through early winter and real winter adaptively. This means paying attention to shifts in wind speeds, humidity level, temperature, and sun exposure. Adapting also means adjusting expectations around stopping during rides for coffee or visits with friends. At a smaller scale, the consistency and range of intensity we ride at needs to be factored carefully. Fat biking can blend low wind speeds and high intensities, where snirt often blends higher wind speeds and lower intensities. The degree to which we manage our kit well determines our range of options with respect to stopping for any length of time, be it planned or unplanned (eg., to deal with mechanical problems).
Adaptability ties into the matter of overcompensation I mention above. The vicious cycle I've observed, and would like to help you, dear reader, avoid, starts in early winter. We ride outside on one of the first windy, humid cold days, and our ears freeze, toes freeze, etc. 'Damn, it's brutal out here!' For the next ride, we're better prepared. Ears covered, heavier jacket, shoe-covers, all that. We bias toward impermeable jackets, wear more than enough, and get sweaty. We stop with friends for a coffee, then freeze once rolling again, because our inside layers are wet with sweat. The dedicated rider will persist, and try to figure out how to tweak their setup for the next ride. If that ride falls the next day, in similar conditions, tweaking layers slightly is fairly straightforward. However, when the next ride falls a week later, after memory around specifics has faded, the reverberating driver of decision making is the emotional imprint of the cold ride. When uncertain, fear of repeating an unpleasant emotional experience drives us toward overcompensation: wear more than we need. The trick is to wear the right pieces, stay dry, and have fun, as the riding conditions shift through their seasonal phases.
Why Polares?
I wore my pair of Polare 2 bibtights so much the stiching on their underside wore through. Hundreds of winter kilometres, many of which were gritty, conspired, but aside from this wear, they remain in good condition. The Polare 3 arrived just in time for the first bitterly cold ride of early winter; the one that froze my forehead. They are positioned alongside my NanoFlex Pro 2 bibtights now, and they complement each other perfectly. What I've written above is primarily for those who need to select one pair of tights for their cold riding. The Polare 3s are for real winter for me, where I live, but the NanoFlex could by better for you. Read on, let's see.
PRODUCT INFO
Rated for -5°-5°C / 23°-41°F
Full GORE-TEX INFINIUM™ WINDSTOPPER® X-Fast front for total wind protection
Nano Flex G3 on seat and lower back leg for splash protection from wet roads
Thermoflex back of thigh for extra warmth and stretch
Mesh bibs don't hold moisture
KISS Air2 seat pad gives great cushioning without excessive bulk
High-visibility reflective stripes above knee in front and above calf on back
Ankle zips for easy on/off
Cost: $295 CAN
The Polare 3 departs significantly from its predecessor. Tasked with covering the coldest temperature range Castelli designs and builds for, the 3 prioritizes dry-cold more than the NanoFlex, which is biased toward wet conditions. While the NanoFlex is likely to be ridden without fenders installed, the Polare is more likely to be paired with a fender bike, or conditions too cold for much road spray. In my region, we have to deal with dry-cold and wet roads, thanks to salt, combined with dry snirt roads. Whereas my bikes of years past couldn't fit fenders and 33mm file tread tires, my current bikes can, so I use fenders through winter to cover all-road riding. This reduces spray significantly, down to zero for the seat-zone, which benefits wear on tights. While the NanoFlex uses particularly protective panels on the front of the shins to address road spray, the Polare 3 forgoes this in favour of insulating fabric. NanoFlex G3 fabric is placed on the back of the tights (seat and lower legs), however, to protect against spray. While fenders are common in some parts of the world, they are very rare in others. In my mind, Castelli's approach with the 3's build is ideally suited to real winter conditions.
If you own a pair of the 2s, you'll want to know that Castelli has also adopted a slightly different approach to fit with the 3s. While the 2 fit like a high performance tight, and was less yielding than other pieces, due to its protective fabrics, the 3 is more generously cut and compliant. The Thermoflex fabric used on the back of the upper legs has a lot to do with this added compliance, and means there's no reason to size up from summer bib sizing; I'd considered doing that after some time in the 2s. The fit isn't 'painted on' and 'aero', which is absolutely fine. Knees have a little more room around them, which must allow for consistent blood circulation.
Using the Polare 3 in early winter at -8C, windy, humid, was the best decision I could have made. My legs were 100% warm through the 4.5 hours or riding I did, and I experienced no moisture buildup. I've actually never experienced moisture buildup with any of my tights in the cold (only from road spray), so this wasn't a surprise. The following day I did a similar ride in the NanoFlex, and found them a little cold, comparatively. Not problematic, but it's important to factor that colder legs translates to colder blood flowing to feet. So if you are stuck with tights that might be insufficient for a ride's conditions, you probably want to go for foot protection that will compensate. My second ride on the Polare 3s involved 2 hours in a blizzard, followed by another 2 hours under clear skies. At around -6C and 80% humidity, my legs were warm, and the snow was too cold to even consider melting on my tights.. I stopped for coffee, having avoided road spray (fenders not yet installed!), and didn’t get cold on my return home.
If I was to use my early winter Polare 3 / NanoFlex Pro 2 comparison as indicative of performance through real winter, that would be a mistake. As the humidity decreases the NanoFlex will perform better than they did, at the same temperature. I've found they tend to be comfortable as low as -10C when the wind isn't strong. Above zero, they are more water resistant than the Polare 3, and more of a 'race cut,' which might be desirable from a performance perspective. At an equivalent snug fit, the NanoFlex is more compliant, and has fewer seams to interfere with joint mobility or create pressure points. This is if comparing apples to apples, which would be a Medium Polare 3 for me against a Large NanoFlex Pro 2. My Large 3s are roomy around the knees, and not particularly tight anywhere.
For a go-to for regions like mine with pretty cold early and real winter, one could certainly wear the Polare 3 from late fall through at least early spring. I used to use the Polare 2 like that before Castelli sent me the NanoFlexes. If complemented with a pair of Sorpasso RoS bib-knickers, or Tutto Nano bib-shorts with NanoFlex knee or leg warmers, its not difficult to bridge through the cold, wet phases of fall and spring. If you use fenders on any of your bikes for these seasons, you can get away less protective pieces than if you don't.
Some will wonder how cold the 3s will work down to during real winter. Based on my previous experience with the 2s, I anticipate the 3s will perform well down to -15C. -20C seems likely for slower riding, like fatbiking, but I am only confident in recommending them down to -15C. This is the temp I draw a line at for ride starts, and fortunately, it's actually fairly uncommon for mornings to be colder than that in my area.
RELATED MATTER
You can read about the NanoFlex Pro 2 bib-tights discussed above, and the Estremo shoecovers I’m wearing in the photos here: Core Pieces for Spring: Castelli in Focus
My collection of writing about Castelli pieces can be found here: MATTER: Castelli
As of this writing (December 2021), I’m an official Castelli brand ambassador. I’m proud to be trusted with this honour, and am committed to helping riders understand and have great experiences with Castelli’s offerings, which I firmly believe are that most innovative in the industry.
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or comments!
