Tips for Paris - Roubaix Sportive

Book some spanking sessions with your local dominatrix. Make sure to get a Therapeutic Use Exemption or this could be considered butt doping.

Batter your arse each and every day for at least 4 hours until the week of the sportive. Double to 8 hours a day for the last month. Have a rest day the day before you start, and take a photo of how it used to look for posterity.

I have also entered this for the first time, although I did tour of Flanders in 2014 so have some idea of what it is like to ride over cobbles. The cobbles in Flanders are well maintained farm roads though and are in much better condition than the ones lining the route to Roubaix, so I have a healthy respect for the challenge ahead!

Some very good advice on here already but I would add that I found it beneficial to keep a relatively high cadence and high speed over the cobbles, rather than churn a big gear, as you have some ability to react to the road surface changing and affecting your speed. Keep the cadence high and smooth and it should allow you to maintain speed. Think of the cobbled sections as where you apply your effort, then recover on the tarmac.

25mm tires and bar tape can help mitigate against punctures and blisters, but in truth this race is a lottery and the best thing you can do is keep your distance from others on the cobbled sections.

Oh, and if it rains...all bets are off.

Enjoy!

For riding cobbles:
- hands on the tops or drops - NOT the hoods!
- biggest gear you can comfortably manage; you need to be churning, not spinning to keep tension in the chain and to keep the speed up.
- faster is better
- look up - pick your line and the bike will (usually...) go where you're looking.
- secure EVERYTHING that is on the bike - saddlebags, waterbottles, computers, bar end plugs, lights, pumps will all take every opportunity to leap off and disappear under the wheels of other riders.
- same for jersey pockets - gels, bars, phones will all bounce out. Use zipped pockets or secure everything with safety pins across the tops of the pockets.
- try and unweight the saddle a bit, hover a few mm above it. It'll kill your calves after a while but it'll save your arse!
- give the bike a service before you go, make sure all bolts are tightened, in particular the random, often overlooked ones like rear mech hanger.
- 25 to 28mm tyres. Drop the pressure by about 10% from what you normally use. If you're using tubeless you can get away with 20% lower.
- try not to go into pave sections nose to tail with other riders, give yourself a few feet of manoeuvre room.
- go faster!
- have fun!

Practice your bike handling skills. It will be more valuable than double bar tape.

Having seen it on tv with the professional riders. Speed is required to make it easier over the cobbles, but speed comes with crash hazards

Do a complete service on your steed, just normal stuff, but make sure everything is cleaned and torqued properly. Cheap Alu bottle holders work the best, Conti 4 Seasons in 25 are highly recommended, and my choice for use as a winter tire. I found gel pads under the bar tape to help, but also used a lot of athletic tape on the tops of my palms, and on the first section of my fingers as well as the bottom of the thumb, did not get a single blister. While to food stops are good, have enough to keep you going from what you are familiar with. It is COLD at the start, but warms up later, so leg/arm warmers, full gloves (mine had no gel, hence the tape on my hands), and I packed a set of fingerless gloves (for later) and a wind gillet (for the start). Make sure to save something for when you get back into town, there is a really nasty, very shallow, but NEVER ending rise on the way back to the Velodrom that will drain you of your will to live, which will be shortly rebuilt by the cheering folk of Roubaix who line the entrance to the Velodrom. Train for hill intervals, as the Pave' are best tackled quickly, and the roughness dictates a medium cadence, but you figure it out pretty quickly, which distance did you enter?

Save your efforts for the pave sections, hit them hard, fast and don't fight the bike. Speed is your friend.

Wear mitts, apply soft hands.

Fit the biggest tyres you can in your frame, and don't inflate them to the maximum recommended inflation pressure.

I rode tubeless 25mm tyres the second year I did it and didn't suffer any punctures, and could run low pressures. The first year I used 24mm tyres with tubes and had five punctures, because I tried to run my tyres as soft as possible.

Other than that you don't really need to make any other changes, but many will tell you to fit gel padded bar tape or double wrap your bar tape. Nothing much can really prepare you for the cobbles, just accept that it's going to be a bumpy and rough road, but the sections are pretty short so the suffering doesn't last long.

Do a quick search in the forum as this was discussed at length very recently.