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 in 2016.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 five 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.

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 available 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 three times longer than the pros.

But the main thing was I’d survived! I remember thinking, that’s if that’s the hardest sector, they can’t be that bad! However, as 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, I was even hoping that I’d crash .
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 two days time?

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

Handlebar Tape
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 double taped everything and triple taped the tops, just make sure you can still reach the brakes easily, I needed to stretch a bit when I was on the drops!

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 ride, I ended up with really bad blisters on 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’d worn  padded gloves for the practice). I went for thin leather mitts, which I would have used this year, if it hadn’t been 4 degrees C when we set off, so I went for full finger.

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’ve ridden plenty of times before.

Bike choice, tyre choice and wheel choice
In 2016, I rode an aluminium race bike with 27mm clincher tyres at 100 psi in 2016 – looking back this made it even harder! This year I rode a steel bike with 28mm tyres at 90 psi. I was tempted with tubeless tyres, but I stuck with what I’m use to, so nothing catastrophic happens that might end my ride.

If I plan to ride the event and the forecast looks wet – I’ll consider taking my cross bike with 35mm tyres at 60psi!

Also, don’t underestimate the difference a cobble specific bike will make. I had the chance to try the offerings from a couple of manufacturers this year and compared to riding an aluminium frame as I did in 2016, I felt like I was cheating!

Bottle Cages, saddle bags and pockets
During the event on hitting the first sector of cobbles, there was numerous 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 went back this year and I’ll return in 2018″

Even with my disaster of a training ride, I managed to ride all the cobbles (albeit slowly) come both Sportive days. 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 keep pedalling. This kept 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 some of the hardest days I’ve ever had on a bike. I’m more of a climber and I’ve limited power on the flats. I was struggling on both occasions near 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 went back this year and I’ll return in 2018.

Written by Ross. Who having recently taken up cyclocross is secretly hoping that 2018 will be as muddy as 2002.

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