Fresh Goods

It’s Friday, yes it’s Friday, said modern-day prophet Tim Westwood on the radio. For us it means another helping of Fresh Goods and we’ve had a bumper delivery of Troy Lee Designs gear this week, thanks to Stephen Cromwell of Fisher Outdoor, who dropped by to show us the many faces of TLD. More on that later.

First up we have the Troy Lee Designs Air glove. It’s got a super thin 0.8mm Clarino synthetic leather palm with silicone print for grip and a lightweight mesh backing for maximum ventilation. In between the fingers there’s perforated mesh for even more airflow. Should be a top glove for giving plenty of feel in the hot weather we feel is sure to come.

Price: £29.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

Here’s a standard issue Roly. He’s comfortably dressed for chilling, illing and drinking real ale, but his ensemble will be both chafing and somewhat out of place on the trails.

Here’s a trail riding Roly, dressed in a Troy Lee Designs Skyline jersey and matching Troy Lee Designs Skyline shorts along with the Air gloves. It’s a more practical, technical and understated but stylish outfit that lets his riding do the talking, we’re sure you’ll agree.

The jersey has a loose cut with mesh vents on the side along with a hidden stash pocket while the shorts use a lightweight stretch polyester/spandex mix fabric with hip and waist adjustment to fine tune the fit. They’ve got triple stitched seams at the bottom of the legs so you can cut them down without them looking untidy. Round the back there is a stretchy spandex yoke panel just above the hips to keep everything comfy and it’s got a hidden, zipped rear pocket to keep his beer tokens or car keys in.

Price: Skyline shorts £61.99, Skyline Jersey £54.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

Here’s a more exuberant, dare we say radiant, Roly, dressed in the same Skyline shorts and jersey, this time in a outgoing red, black and turquoise paint drip design.

Now Roly’s gone full-on downhill, with the Troy Lee GP pants in a hot red, and a Sprint jersey up top. See what we meant about the many faces of TLD? The pants are made from extremely hard wearing cordura and have a tapered leg to keep them out of the way when pedaling and the top has micro mesh panels for maximum airflow to body armour. The outfit is topped off with the new D3 Carbon helmet in the Sam Hill signature colours. We’ll have some separate words on that helmet soon…

Price: GP pants £119.99, Sprint jersey £54.99, D3 Carbon helmet £499.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

Sim’s hirsute legs are modelling the Troy Lee Designs Ace shorts. They’re  a 4 way stretch spandex/polyester mix short designed for warm weather riding, with plenty of vents to keep you from overheating. The cunning single stripe down the legs of the shorts conceals both a lower vent and a cargo pocket. They come complete with inner chamois short and use the same neat leg length trimming guide and spandex back panel as the Skyline shorts.

Price: £86.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

On one hand Sim is wearing the Troy Lee Air glove in a brighter old skool BMX style yellow, white, red and blue colourway and on the other he’s got the Troy Lee Ace Gloves in black and red. The Ace glove uses a super thin mesh backing, which not best suited for hot days we’ve been suffering with lately, should be excellent in summer, which can’t come too soon. The clarino palm is a bit thicker than on the Air glove with reinforced bits on high wear areas. There’s a terry thumb for snot wiping  and it uses a velcro closure to make it nice and easy to get on and off.

Price: £24.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

Stephen had been to Blackpool for the weekend before coming to visit us, so he brought us some sticks of rock too…

We’ve just got the latest incarnation of the Orange ST4 Pro in for the next bike grouptest. The new ST4 has got a revised back end with the same 110mm of travel now controlled via the swing link system seen on the Orange Blood. The angles remain the same which should mean the same great handling we liked so much from the old ST4 but now in a stiffer package.

Price: £1,524.99 for frame, £2919.99 for Pro model shown here

From: Orange Bikes

You can run any fork from 120 to 140mm up front too…

New swing link…

Revised back end should keep everything nice and stiff too..

This is the MET Kaos Ultimalite helmet. It’s a nice and super lightweight trail riding helmet that uses an integral mould design to join the hard outer to the protective inner. There are 22 vents all over it which should keep things nice and cool, but the really trick bits are inside…

Price: £119.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

There’s a gel piece at the front of the helmet that should keep it in place and comfortable no matter how sweaty your bonce gets, without any of the irritation normal pads can give when they rub into your moist brow.

The straps are pretty neat too, with Kevlar fibres used to keep them lightweight, strong and allow as much air as possible to get through.

Cheese scones! Delicious, life-giving cheese baked into tasty pastry snacks. Best to hold the jam and cream though…

Mavic do much more than just rims now and clothing range has been really well received. We’ve liked previous incarnations of their shoes and these are the new Mavic Razor shoes. Designed for cross country racing use at a more affordable price than the top end Fury, they’ve got a synthetic leather and mesh upper with ratchet upper strape and two velcro comfort straps. The sole is a fibre reinforced nylon item with rubber side lugs for walking traction.

Price: £100

From: Mavic

The Mavic Alpine XL shoe is a more aggressively featured version of their trail friendly Alpine shoe we tested a few issues back. It uses more abrasion resistant materials, a lace guard and a neoprene ankle cover to keep the water out. There’s an EVA midsole to absorb vibration. The mesh has an ‘Agion’ anti bacterial treatment to stop it ponging too…

Price: £100

From: Mavic

This is the SH+ Zeuss helmet, a relatively new brand to these shores. The in-moulded design combines the outer shell and inner foam to make it lighter and there’s a nylon ‘butterfly frame’ moulded in to the foam to provide extra strength. There’s a quickly adjustable retention strap round the back and a neck strap that can be tweaked while riding, complete with padding to stop chafing.

Price: £99.95

From: Greyville Enterprises

The Look Quartz Carbon pedals have got an injection moulded carbon fibre body with steel axle. They spin on one sealed bearing and one needle roller bearing to keep everything smooth. The hollow centre should shed mud well and they’ve got 20 degrees of float, which should be especially friendly to anyone with wonky knees. These versions weigh in at a claimed 115g per pedal, but cheaper plastic bodied and more expensive Ti axle versions are available too.

Price: £124.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

This is a newcomer to the adjustable post market, in for Issue 64’s uppy downy post grouptest – the XLC Pro Adjustable Seatpost. Available in 30.9 and 31.6mm diameters, it’s got a 400mm overall length with 95mm full adjustable drop controlled by a rubberised lever under the saddle. Weighing in at 600g, it’s substantially cheaper than most of the posts on the market and we’re looking forward to seeing how it’ll cope.

Price: £124.95

From: Greyville Enterprises

Sturdy 6061 T6 aluminium construction and micro adjust clamp. Is this the uppy downy post for the masses?

We’ve got a load of the new Santini H2O waterproof kit in. The H2O Aquazero fabric is water proof while keeping it’s stretchy properties This is the rather neat Santini H2O skullcap. It’ll keep you head warm and waterproof and should fit neatly under a helmet. The flatlocked seams are stitched with reflective thread for use at night and the silicon gripper should prevent it moving about. All Sim needs to do now is listen to his conscience and answer the eternal question of “do I want to go riding when it’s this grim?”

Price: £29.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

You’d all wondered where Matt in Lycra has gone from Fresh Goods hadn’t you? A special treat for you this week, as he’s modelling the Santini H20 Bib Tights. They also use the waterproof H2O fabric for full length wet weather coverage and promise to maintain comfort, elasticity, softness, breathability and warmth even with prolonged use. The gel Intech insert in the padding should make them gentle on the bottom too.

Price: £132.49

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

Matt’s got some more Odlo base layers. This one is the Odlo Effect Warm synthetic base layer which is available in a number of thicknesses depending on how hot you run and how cold it is outside. The fabric uses outward stictched seams to prevent running and has uses the anti bacterial effect of silver to prevent the pong that can plague synthetics.

Price: £49.99

From: Odlo

This is the Odlo Evolution Warm base layer, which uses ‘body mapping’ to prevent overheating in hotspots. The body of the top is made from a seamless piece of synthetic fabric and we think it looks kind of like a cross between ‘Tron’ and ‘300’.

Price: £49.99

From: Odlo

Leg warmers can be dead useful for going out in changeable weather and these Santini H20 Leg Warmers have silicon grippers to keep them from moving, as well as the Aquazero fabric to should keep you nice, dry and warm.

Price: £54.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

Jon’s scrawny arms are modelling the matching Santini H2O armwarmers too. At least it draws attention away from the bald spots…

Price: £29.99

From: Fisher Outdoor Leisure

Subscriber and all round nice guy Mark Wheadon popped into the office to discuss with Jamie the ins and outs of magazine distribution.  Moving swiftly on, he mentioned his partner Kate is considering starting a Sushi delivery service in Calderdale if there is enough interest. Top notch stuff it is too.  This was gone in only a few minutes.  Any potential takers can register their interest to Kate by dropping her an email HERE.

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