Live Updates: 2013 Giro d’Italia – Stage 18 – Mori to Polsa, 20.8km (ITT)

2013 Giro D’ Italia – Stage 17 – Caravaggio to Vicenza, 214km

Live Coverage: 2013 Giro d’Italia – Stage 16 – Valloire to Ivrea, 238km

Live Updates: 2013 Giro D’ Italia – Stage 15 – Cesana Torinese to Col du Galibier, 145km

Live Coverage: 2013 Giro d’Italia – Stage 14 – Cervere to Bardonecchia, 168km

Live Coverage: 2013 Giro D’ Italia – Stage 13 – Busseto to Cherasco, 254km

Live Updates: 2013 Giro D’ Italia – Stage 12 – Longarone to Treviso, 134km

Live Coverage: 2013 Giro D’ Italia – Stage 11 Tarvisio To Vajont, 182km

Live Coverage: 2013 Giro d’ Italia – Stage 10 – Cordenons to Altopiano del Montasio, 167km

Friday Group Ride #166

Oh, man. When I brought up helmets last week, I had this sneaking suspicion it was a better conversation starter than the Giro d’Italia, though in years past I know we would have turned the Giro over and over like a favorite record. 50 comments later, I think we covered helmets pretty well.

In midweek, Padraig reviewed a new pair of gloves, and that got me thinking that gloves have that same sort of personal character that helmets do.

Truth be told, I prefer to ride without gloves, but years of doing so, while spending my days with my paws on a keyboard, have left the nerves that run from my arms into my mitts with less than optimal connectivity. Some days it doesn’t take very long for a familiar buzzing to creep from my palms up into my fingers.

So, I tend to keep a couple or three pairs of gel-palmed gloves in my steady rotation. The right glove can cradle my frayed nerves and dissipate enough vibration to keep me sensate all day long, over road and gravel, up singletrack and down powerline cut. The Giro Monaco long-fingered glove is a particular favorite, with just the right amount of pad.

Padding, breathability, seam-angle and height, materials, they all go into making a great glove, and of course durability is an issue, because we use our hands for everything.

This week’s Group Ride is about gloves. What do you wear and why? As it’s mostly warm most everywhere right now, let’s keep this to warmer weather gloves. The winter variety can be an entirely different beast with a whole other set of challenges.

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