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Although these knee/shin guards have a couple nice features (FI, the soft padded flabric that cowls over the top of your shoes to keep mud out), they are one of the worst designed and executed commercial products we've encountered in a long time. Get this: the straps which attach the guards close on the INSIDE of the legs so they are constantly catching on the bike frame, shock, etc. as you ride. Cool! A cursory look at existing knee/shin quards designs (e.g., for the baseball catcher's shin guards) could have clued Race Face to the face that its WAY better to have the closures on the OUTSIDE of the leg. Here's another howler from the Race Face Rally FR: the velco is stitched on the WRONG end of the straps so the two velcro pieces can't connect with each other! I'm not making this up, nor is my pair of Rally FR's an exceptional case. I was talking about what turkeys these leg guards are the other day up on Wonderland when one of the guys in the group, Bill, suddenly got real excited as said, "yea, man! Mine are exactly the same," and he showed me. This makes it even harder to get the straps to stay closed, since the velco they're supposed to fasten to is safely tucked away out of reach.
And while we're on the subject of closures, the entire Race Face concept here is a couple thousand years out of date. Your velco should set the staps for BUCKLES or CLASPS, so that you don't have to undo and redo everything from scratch every time you put the darn things on. I believe the technology represented by the clasp has been in widspread use since before the birth of Christ. Time to get with it, Race Face!
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