My growing collection of cycling jerseys

I’ve only been cycling 2 seasons but for some reason I already have 9x cycling jerseys!? I normally spend very little time thinking about clothing or buying it, most of my clothes my wife buys for me or I get as birthday or Christmas presents. There are basically three reasons I think why my cycling jersey collection keeps growing to the point that I should probably start thinking about running for el’ presidentia of some 3d world country.

One of the reasons that I have so many jerseys already is because I’ve lost 65lbs in the last year and still losing, I went from wearing a XXL to a medium or large depending on the brand and if I want to be as aero as possible.  So half my jersey’s don’t really even fit my anymore. When you’re racing you want your jersey a bit snug so it’s not flapping in the wind and also if it rains bad things happen if your jersey is even a little too big, I found out that in the rain the material on some jersey’s will stretch out and also the weight of being wet will open up a gap in the shirt’s collar and arm sleeves and you turn into a parachute, and to make matters worse the material being wet doesn’t let air escape like it would in a dry shirt so it really can be super annoying for training and esp. racing.

The other reason is that depending on what racing event or training ride I’m doing I might wear my local cycling clubs jersey, or when I ride with the other clubs I wear a neutral jersey as there always seems to be someone that has a rivalry with some club and I don’t want to get mixed up with that. So that means I needed a couple other jersey’s besides the 3x different sizes of club jersey’s I have now.

And the last reason is that I find that I find something I don’t like about every single jersey I own, I have yet to find the perfect jersey, here is a list of my gripes, this makes me sound really anal, maybe I a bit, but hey maybe one of these jersey design people will read this a finally make a jersey that doesn’t suck.

1. the zipper is tiny and weak or
2. has too big or small a zipper handle, or
3. the length of the zipper doesn’t go all the way down so I can unzip it all the way and get it off and on easy esp. if it’s one of my snug medium sized jerseys
4. the torso is snug but the arm bands sleeves are too tight.

So far in my quest to find the ultimate jersey I’ve found two that I’m mostly happy with

A Giordana Cycling Jersey I just got this year, the zipper is full length YKK quality zipper that works really smooth, easy to engage and zip up fast even with one hand it will open and close., the handle on the zipper is just about perfect, it’s metal which stupid as a big metal zipper handle flips around on every pedal stroke swinging into the zipper and making a clicking noise, or flip up and keep hitting in the neck or chin on every single pedal stroke. I know it’s anal but little things like that get on your nerves after a couple hours of riding. So the Giordana Jersey is nice because it a nylon zipper handle with a perfect sized plastic/rubber handle neither too small to grab full finger gloves on, or so big it flips all around.

My next favorite Jersey I picked up recently was a BellWeather Cycling Jersey, the good points are that it has material I think it’s spandex type material that stretches in all directions not just one like typical jersey material. It has some sticky rubber cycling jersey type band around the waist of the shirt, seems to help keep the jersey down, the cut is good, the fit is good. Now there are a couple things that are bad though, the zipper is only a 1/2 length, and the zipper is tiny with small anemic teeth, certainly not a YKK zipper  and small with a small flap of nylon for a zipper handle but no actual rubber or plastic ball etc. to get a grip on you can work with gloves on. Also as much as I like the spandex type material they made it so thin that I can’t see it lasting long also I made the mistake of buying a white/black jersey that basically becomes transparent when you start sweating or it rains, you can not only see my heart rate monitor strap, cycling bib straps, you can see my chest hair and man nipples ahahaa. Just looks really stupid when make a water stop at a gas station I mean you’re walking looking silly to begin with with full cycling gear then your man nipples and chest hair are visible as well LOL ahahaa In the city it might not draw much attention, but where I ride, I get into some pretty rural areas where people think an alien has landed when you come walking into their gas stations all decked out in cycling garb and kit lol…

All my other jersey’s suck for more reasons then they don’t so they hardly get worn esp. now since they don’t fit any longer, one of the good/bad parts of losing weight and getting in shape from cycling.

So let me know what your favorite cycling jersey is what brand and why.
Anyway I feel better now that I got that “off my chest” lol ahaha