In 2020, I awarded the Rapha Pro Team Insulated Gore-Tex jacket three stars out of five, praising its exceptional construction, unrivalled foul-weather protection and effective insulation – while also highlighting its extraordinarily high price tag, compromised zips and perilously narrow use case.
With such a limited appeal, the jacket has spent years languishing unused until a truly disgusting nighttime after-school rattle around Wales this week.
With conditions hovering around 5°C in a consistent gloomy murk of pelting rain, this was the perfect opportunity to give the jacket another go and see if my findings stood up to the scrutinous eye of an older, if not wiser, me.
Fully defrosted from this memorably stupid ride, I stand by my original findings, and revisiting this jacket has, once again, hammered home an important lesson about how we should choose our kit.
- Read my original review: Rapha Pro Team Insulated Gore-Tex jacket review
The siren song of specialism
Lest you accuse me of being a wilting Zwift wuss made of sugar, I’ll defensively stress from the off that I’m a keen winter rider, and have enjoyed (I think?) many rides in bleak weather in the intervening years.
But the specific conditions required for this jacket to be practical are found so infrequently here in the south west of England that I have always shunned it.
Still, while cresting a gentle hump on a dank Welsh hillside, as my overshoes filled with icy water, but my core remained cosy and dry, there was nothing I would rather have been wearing.
The jacket’s impermeable ShakeDry face fabric, cosy insulation, head-hugging hood and weather-beating zips seal you fully from the elements to a level that remains unmatched – in the right conditions, there's no questioning that this is a great piece of kit.
But it speaks volumes that it has taken almost six years for me to find another compelling reason to wear it.
Some of that is unquestionably personal. I have lost count of the times I’ve referred to myself as a sweaty Scotsman on this website – even moderate efforts in insulated or waterproof jackets see my oxters guffing profusely.
More broadly, I stand by the conclusion of my original review – while the promises of specialist kit might tempt our basest urge for adventure, we should remain canny to their hydrophobic siren song.
To quote the naff passage stitched to its lining, you don't need this jacket to tackle "the clouds… poisoned with a green hue" or "dime-sized hail".
That’s because very few of us find ourselves riding frequently in conditions that warrant buying something so narrow in focus – and more to the point, do you really want, or need, to ride in such weather?
Test, note, repeat
If you do – and I count myself among this number – a wardrobe of well-selected layers will do the job just as well for a similar, or the same, price as something as specialist as this slightly daft Rapha jacket.
A dependable, solid foundation of winter cycling kit is far more useful for almost all riding than garb designed for fringe conditions.
In my case, I’ve settled on wearing the following essentials for the past few winter seasons for almost all rides:
- A lightweight mesh long-sleeve baselayer
- Mid-weight fleece-backed jersey, or a windproof insulated jersey, depending on conditions
- And a windproof gilet or waterproof jacket – again, depending on conditions
You’d be hard-pressed to buy all of that for the same price as the modern-day equivalent of the jacket I tested (RRP £330) from Rapha.
But canny shopping in the sales, or from more affordable brands, would net you a similar combo that is far more versatile than a single specialist jacket.
Indeed, I’ve ridden comfortably in various combinations of the above in conditions ranging from around freezing up to about 10°C – a far wider spectrum than a single, specialist item could ever achieve.
Establishing the magic formula for those specific conditions requires a little trial and error. I would strongly encourage anyone who frequently finds themselves too hot or too cold to make notes after rides, outlining what worked and what didn’t about a particular outfit.
That sounds ridiculous, but committing these things to paper helps ingrain them in your psyche, so when you look out of the window while running late for a ride with your friends, you don’t panic into the wrong choice.
So the next time you consider buying new kit – for any season – that promises to fix the ails of old, consider whether you’ve been hooked by a solution in search of a problem.
There will always be riders who benefit from kit designed for the extremes, but for most of us, I can almost certainly guarantee that what you have already will do just as good a job.
