Rough roads don’t have to mean rough rides. Scientists, frame builders, component suppliers and clothing companies are working to take the sting out of road rattle. Compliant frames and forks, seatpost suspension, tolerant wheels, sympathetic tyres, padded shorts and mitts can turn a jolty jaunt into a ride that glides.
The comfortable solutions are worth seeking because the dangers are real. Constant vibration on the handlebar can damage nerves in your hands and fingers and a shaking saddle can press persistently and painfully on your perineum. The most extreme is the Paris-Roubaix pavé, which shakes the riders for 90 minutes at intensities that are banned for factory workers if they go on for more than seven minutes a day.
the wrong wheels can increase the tremors by 13% and tyres by a massive 25%
‘Pro cycling is definitely a sport of discomfort,’ says Brent Bookwalter, BMC Racing Team rider and top time-triallist. ‘You have to be willing to place yourself in an uncomfortable position physically for a very long time.’ Even assuming your bike is set up perfectly for your body, any coarse tarmac can shiver your timbers.
What’s more, getting shaken all over saps your energy significantly. Experiments have shown that if you are vibrated as you cycle, your body needs up to 5% more oxygen.
Fortunately, scientists have been pinpointing the problems so solutions can be found. They say 24% of the handlebar vibration is down to the choice of forks and another 15% to the wheels. For the seatpost vibrations, the wheels get 42% of the blame and the frame 28%. But pause before planning to change those parts. Scientists at the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne in France, who’ve been agitating about vibration and cycling for years, point out that the wrong wheels can increase the tremors by 13% and tyres by a massive 25%, which means the best solution could also be the cheapest. They got their figures by making a long-suffering FDJ team rider pedal to and fro across some sketchy surfaces.
Yet they also confirmed what many riders have learned from experience – if the going gets bumpy and you don’t want that numbness in your fingers or tingling up your arms, it’s best to put your hands on the brake hoods.
Give the pads a break
Padded mitts are a personal choice. ‘Finding the right glove is important, as your hands are main pressure points when you’re riding your bike. Sometimes a thicker pad in a glove doesn’t actually help the vibration,’ says Harriet Owen of the Matrix Fitness Pro Cycling team. ‘I use Bontrager RXL gloves as I think a gel pad provides great durability, reduces pressure and helps to eliminate hand numbness.’
Bookwalter has ridden with and without hand cushioning. ‘In Paris-Roubaix, I double-wrapped my bar tape and wore padded gloves, but usually I wear unpadded gloves because I like the way it connects me to the bike and the handlebar. I prefer to pay a little bit of a price in comfort and vibration.’
Likewise, the choice of chamois for shorts is personal. Josh Ibbett won the 2015 Transcontinental race, cycling from Flanders to Istanbul in nine days, 23 hours and 54 minutes, wearing the slimmest of pads. ‘I had a thinner chamois because there’s less to chafe – and they dry out quicker,’ he says.
The pad isn’t rated very highly for most riders, particularly when compared to the influence of the bike on comfort, and this has been borne out by new research at the University of Padova, Italy. Dr Antonio Paoli recruited nine club riders and made them wear a selection of chamois in their shorts as they pedalled. The result? The volunteers perceived little difference between the comfort given by the basic and the endurance pads, even though instruments showed the endurance pad reduced maximum pressures. Still, they were on a stationery bike in a lab and pedalling for only 20 minutes, which is not typical of most cycling experiences.
Keep your frame in mind
In the real world, framebuilders hope that whatever’s in your shorts is not a big issue because they want their frames to soften the ride sufficiently before any road buzz affects your body. In recent years they’ve been working hard to keep frames laterally stiff, so pedalling efforts are translated efficiently into forward motion, while somehow boosting their vertical compliance – the flex that helps absorb bumps and vibrations.
Bianchi and Specialized have both included viscoelastic materials in their carbon to dampen vibration. Trek’s Domane and new Madone feature an IsoSpeed decoupler that acts like a bearing at the junction of the seat tube and top tube to allow the seatpost to flex almost independently of the rest of the bike. Cannondale says its sinuous SAVE-shaped rear triangle does the job. Pinarello added a Jaguar-designed lightweight shock absorber to the seatstays of its Dogma K8-S, along with flexing chainstays.
Deciding which are most comfortable in general is not easy. A new study by the Reims scientists shows the effect varies according to the frequency of the juddering. So, a Lapierre Pulsium, with its twin section top tube and elastomer, came top when dampening vibrations faster than 40 times a second (40Hz), but others were better at lower frequencies.
That’s useful information if you know the speed you’ll be riding and the bumpiness of the cobbles ahead but, unless you’ve ridden those sections often, those are unknowns for most of us. Mind you, vibrations at 40Hz are best avoided if possible because other experiments suggest they give a real battering to your ankles, particularly when your foot is at the lowest part of the pedal stroke.
Tyre pressure
The bikes in the Reims lab tests had tyres inflated to 100psi, a conventional choice for road riding, but reducing pressure from that norm is the easiest way to reduce road shock. ‘When I rode the Spring Classics this season, wider tyres were fitted to every bike, 25mm, and ran at a lower tyre pressure to help improve comfort,’ says Harriet Owen of Matrix Fitness.
The BMC squad uses 25mm tyres almost as a matter of course these days, according to Bookwalter, although he asks the mechanics to run his at a little lower pressure than his team mates. ‘Comfort, vibration and control is a big piece of that,’ he says. ‘Even if the rolling resistance is a little bit slower, I feel like the lower pressure is a lot more supple and keeps your tyres rolling on the ground rather than bouncing all over the place.’
The severity of surfaces Josh Ibbett expected on the Transcontinental led him to go even wider – 28mm. ‘They’re underrated in road racing but they eliminate pinch punctures so you can run them at lower pressures. I had them at 90psi to start but when I went off a good surface, I dropped it to 50-60psi to get a wider footprint,’ says Ibbett. ‘Potholes really jolt and less air takes away the harshness.
I was riding with the minimum amount of gear so it was all measured with the “magic thumb” tyre pressure gauge,’ ie pressing the tyre with the thumb to feel how much air was in it.
Now it’s acknowledged that wider tyres put more rubber on the road to boost control and grip, yet the comfort benefits of changing tyre pressure apparently differs between riders, according to some clever lab tests by engineers at Sherbrooke University, Canada. They recruited seven experienced cyclists and put them on the same bike in turn – a large Argon 18 Helium fitted with Mavic Ksyrium 18-spoke wheels and Michelin Pro Race tyres, just 23mm wide. It was a fairly stiff set- up and highly likely to transmit a lot of road shock – which is what the cycling lab rats were going to have to endure.
The researchers asked the innocent volunteers to ride the bike on a treadmill, to which they had cunningly glued a wooden dowel almost 1cm high. The back of the bike was lifted slightly so only the front wheel was on the treadmill.
As the rolling road moved, the rider was bumped roughly every second, as they kept their hands on the brake hoods. Then, without telling them, the tyre pressure was changed and they were asked if they noticed any difference in the jolt at their hands on the brake hoods. Surprisingly, three out of the seven riders said they couldn’t feel anything different even when the pressure was dropped from 100psi to 70psi.
It’s the first time that anyone has tested how sensitive riders are to tyre pressure changes through their hands. ‘This suggests that some cyclists have a better capacity than others to differentiate the impact of sensory inputs at the hands,’ say the Canadian researchers. In other words, you might pump your tyres rock-hard and not feel a thing, but your mate will be shaking all over if he does the same. It seems that your comfort can come down to the kind of rideryou are and the roads you ride on, as much as the bike you ride. The trick is to ignore the hype and experiment with changes in tyre pressure, saddles, shorts, seatposts and the rest, and see what works best for you. If that sounds like a pain in the neck,it could at least save you a pain in the backside.