How to ride (survive) the Cobbles

Living “up North” in England I’ve ridden cobbles plenty of times, before I ever decided to attempt the Paris Roubaix. Most of my experience has been on cobbled climbs in or around Halifax.

Trooper Lane in Halifax. More  Koppenberg, than Arenberg.

Shibden Wall, Trooper Lane and Gibb lane are really more suited to practice for Flanders, rather than Paris-Roubaix. Climbing on slippy cobbles is definitely easier than riding slippy flat cobbles at time-trial speeds. So it was fair to say, that I was quite nervous the first time I hit the Paris – Roubaix Cobbles.

I arrived in Roubaix a couple of days before the event, so rather then just spinning the legs I decided to take “the unknown” out of the event, by riding the cobbles beforehand. I planned a route on the normal roads straight to the Troupe d’ Arenberg so I could kick off with a 5 star sector. My rationale being, that if I could survive one of the hardest sectors, then I’d hopefully be able to survive the others.

Troupe d’Arenberg – one of the 5 star (hardest) rated sectors.

So here goes nothing! In retrospect I definitely didn’t hit them hard enough, I was only doing about 15mph, and as soon as I hit the first few cobbles it was like being on a bucking bronco! My speed immediately dropped to about 10 miles as hour – I tried to accelerate, but I was finding it very difficult. I just couldn’t fight the bucking caused by the cobbles with my lack of power. So I just kept bouncing down the trench holding on for dear life and trying to pedal as much as I could. I finally reached the end, nearly taking 3 times longer than the pros.

But I’d survived! I remember thinking, that’s if that’s the hardest sector, they can’t be that bad! However, what I was soon to find out was that it’s not the difficulty of a particular sector that would be the problem, it’s the relentless riding of one sector after another after another that would torture my body to the point that I just wanted to stop so bad and I even started hoping that I’d crash so I could pull out.
After nine sectors I’d had enough (I’d planned to do 12), my hand were in ribbons mainly from the friction, my fingers had turned into claws, and my arms were completely full of lactic acid. I could hardly hold on to the bars –  how was I going to survive 27 sectors in 2 days time?

Time for google – a quick search revealed the lengths that Pros go to protect themselves against the vibrations. This is what I discovered:

Bartape
Firstly, double or even triple tape your bars. This really, really works – it allows you to rest your hands on the bars loosely instead of having to grip hard around a much narrower bar. I double taped the tops last year; this year I’m going to double tape everything and consider triple taping the tops.

Tape your hands and glove choice.

Double tape your hands as well as your handlebars.

Tape anywhere you think might rub with decent physio tape. On my practice, I ended up with really bad blisters in the palm of my hands and on my thumbs.  So I taped them all up, and then put more tape over the first bits of tape to stop them from coming off, then slide my hands inside some mitts. I didn’t go for much padding in the mitts, as that seemed to increase the friction for me (I wore really padded gloves for my practice). I went for thin leather mitts, which I’d definitely use again.

Bibshorts and Saddle
Even although my cobble technique is definitely lacking and my speed is too slow to skip over them, I didn’t have trouble with my saddle or bibshorts. My advice here, is to wear really good bid shorts and only ride a saddle that you know won’t cause you any issues.

Bike choice, tyre choice and wheel choice
I rode an aluminium race bike with 27mm clincher tyres at 100 psi. When I go back this year I’ll be riding a steel bike with 30mm tyres at 90 psi. I’m tempted with tubeless, but I think I’ll just stick with what I’m use to so nothing catastrophic happens that might end my ride.

Bottle Cages, saddle bags and pockets
On the first sector of cobbles I was amazed to see loads of bidons that had been ejected from cages and many other items (full saddle bags, pumps, sunglasses, energy gels, bananas, inner tubes etc) that had fallen from saddle bags or jersey pockets. Swap your cages to some MTB ones and think about carrying everything you need, in well packed jersey pockets.

How to ride them

‘even although this was the hardest event I’d ever done,

I’ll be back to do it all again this year and I can’t wait.’

Even with my disaster of a training ride, I managed to ride all the cobbles (albeit slowly) come Sportive day. It was wet when we set off in the morning and we had a bit of mud to contend with too, however I quickly realised that on any cobbled surface (whether wet or dry) the best thing to do, no matter what speed you’re doing, was to just keep pedalling. This keep forward momentum, and that seemed get the bike through the mud and over the cobbles. If I was struggling to go fast, I’d spin the little ring so I could always keep some power going to the rear wheel.

This for me was the hardest day I’ve ever had on the bike. I’m more of a climber and I’ve limited power on the flats. I was struggled by the end to even hold on to my bike. They say don’t grip hard and just rest your hands on the tops, but I found that I had little choice as I needed to grip hard to keep control of the bike. Amazing really, that even although this was the hardest event I’d ever done, I’ll be back to do it all again this year and I can’t wait.

This was my experience on what worked for me. I’d welcome your insights and any tips below, on how I can ride the cobbles better in 2017.

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