Q36.5 Miles Gregarius Bibshort
When your old shorts begin to lose shape or the pad goes a bit flat your choices are to keep on trucking or go get some new ones, now at RRR we love technology and things that make a difference to your day to day life on a bike, but how can you do this with shorts? Now the last advance in short tech must be synthetic chamois and before that it would have to be the use of figure hugging lycra instead of knitted wool shorts, maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board and start again or perhaps it’s a case of if it’s not broken why try to fix it.
Now I will admit it but I had been looking at these shorts before Santa decided to pop a set under the Christmas tree, I know some people (co-workers) who have some salopettes (as they call them) from Q36.5, and they like them, and one of them likes them a lot. To cut the story short after 20 years of designing performance cycling clothing at the highest level, Luigi Bergamo went back home to his Native Dolomites and founded Q36.5, in his words “a laboratory for unrestrained research and experimentation into what the future of cycling clothing could be”. Now that just makes me think of mad scientists hunched over test tubes laughing, before a failed experiment leads to a half cow half boy mutant super hero that runs away to fight crime in a made up American city.
Wide comfortable braces keep everything in place.
What it has really brought about is some very clever new materials not used in cycling clothing before, and what I have been led to believe some very good fitting clothing. These new shorts are meant to have a different feel almost compression like, but not the Miles Gregarius model that I have now got to play with. The Miles Gregarius is named after the hard-working Roman foot soldiers who could march in full kit for days on end, and these shorts have been designed to be worn all day long in comfort. Unlike the other models Q36.5 make they are not the image of the future of sports clothing designed by the mad scientists, but more like an evolutionary shift to the currant design that’s already on the market with some DNA of the future graffted in.
Opening the box that the shorts came in is a pleasure, pop the lid and it opens out like a flower to reveille the shorts rolled up in the middle, look if you get a premium priced product you want it to look like you have, this box really gives that impression. I’m not one for hanging about so before I opened anything else under the tree it was of the bathroom to try them on. Stop, hang on, what’s this? Even though the legs seem to be made of normal short material the braces and the panel running from the back of the braces down to the top of the rear pad are not. The braces are of a tubular mesh construction to avoid any seams meeting skin, and then there is the lumbar support, no other cycle bib shorts in the world has a specific support built in this way. The lumbar support is made of a woven fabric that’s ribbed to create a greater modulus force (to you and me that means its stretchy but needs a lot of force to stretch it). As most muscle groups used in cycling are fixed here Q36.5 decided it would be good to offer support for them in this area. These two features come from their top end future short.
Hi modulus force fabric at the base of the short between braces and pad
So how does it feel on I hear you ask, well good is my answer even from box fresh and not the riding position that these shorts are shaped for they feel good, on the bike they felt great, like all new shorts with a bad like these it’s going to take a few rides to break them in and whilst on my Christmas break riding the Rapha 500 I used them nearly every day, then popped them in the wash and hung them out to dry. Every day I rode them the pad shaped to me a little more, and now I seem to have them on most of the time. The tubular braces are very comfortable, never cutting in and in general holding the shorts exactly where they are meant to be, the supporting panel at the rear seems to do a good job, I am a chap who suffers from back issues so any kind of help is good and you can feel the material working with you. Just as a side note when I washed them with my other shorts these dried much faster. A few facts for you, the material used on the legs for these shorts have a higher thread count than most high-end shorts and is constructed from 100% recycled fibres. We all know that cycle clothing can be costly, but take into consideration at 188g these are the lightest knitted bib shorts on the market, come with some green credentials and have great design stitched into them you won’t find in any other brand.
Price £140
Weight 188g
For more information www.q36-5.com