David A  -  Portland, Oregon

It’s funny, but actually didn’t know what “Belgian Kneewarmers” referred to until about a year ago. I guess it might be, perhaps, that as I was in the habit of putting on one or another type of embrocation gunk on the knees and legs, and that everyone else was doing the same thing, I never knew there was an American term for it.

Yes, for those of you who have never been in a dressing room immediately prior to a Belgian kermis, classic, semi-classic, or cyclocross race … the air becomes thick with the fragrance of at least a dozen different analgesic ointments. Some of these are familiar smells – a lot like that Ben Gay smell you got when you went to visit your grandparents. Some of them, on the other hand, are like nothing you have smelled before – and quite possibly could be some sort of cross between a freaky hillbilly poultice and a high desert meth lab.

I previously outlined the crazy, compulsive steps that it takes to get ready for a kermis race here, but for the uninitiated, this ritual will undoubtedly include smearing the legs with some sort of potion – a potion that may perhaps only promise the feeling of warmth, or one that may guarantee that the rider has “good legs.”

Having ridden for smaller teams where the soigneur turnover was fairly frequent, I have had the opportunity to have many different forms of embrocation goo smeared onto/into my legs. In fact, I might go so far as to say that I have tried it all.

For me, there are three 4 products to carry along to any sort of cold weather, or rainy race:

Cramer Red Hot®
Cramer Atomic Balm®
Sixtus Start Oil
Vaseline®

Red Hot is only for the knees and has the capability to burn the living hell out of your eyes … and delicate bits … so please be extra careful when using this stuff.

Atomic Balm is the next step down and can be used up to, say, 60-65 degrees, depending upon your tolerance. By that temperature, I would only be using that on the knees, but it won’t kill you to have the stuff running all the way down to your ankles.

Start Oil is my favorite. It gives you a bit of a tingling feeling, but really doesn’t produce any “warmth.” If nothing else, Start Oil makes your legs all shiny and has a certain smell that always made me want to fight, so do give it a try.

You know, I was going to provide a link to Vaseline’s site as well, but the thing is full of naked man bodies touching each other, so I will spare you that. Petroleum jelly – and generic is fine too, helps to keep all that other stuff from washing off, should it be really raining. If the temperature was below 65 and it was raining, the Vaseline would come out and at least be smeared all over the knees.

I had one other amazing way to keep the cold off the legs when it rained/snowed/hailed at the start of a race. I bought a pair of chaps, yes chaps, from my old teammate Patrick Cocquyt, who had first gotten them from Mr. Paris-Roubaix, Roger DeVlaeminck. (You might want to turn the volume down/off) The things were amazing – each leg consisted of a tapered piece of neoprene that stayed in place via 3 Velcro® straps and a safety pin. If it was raining, the fronts of my legs stayed ultra-warm, but there was no feeling of constriction, as you sometimes get from legwarmers when it rains. As soon as the weather was finished, I could tear the things off as quickly as a basketball player can strip the tear-aways from his legs and get onto the court. Boom.

Back to the definition of Belgian Kneewarmers for a second – after I started hearing the term, I always thought it just referred to the Ace bandages we wore on the knees in cold weather – before real kneewarmers were invented.