How to Ride in Comfort

How to Ride in Comfort

The best way to have an enjoyable RAGBRAI experience is to be fit and also to be comfortable on your bike. These blogs have focused mostly on how to get fit for RAGBRAI so this one is going to be focused on making sure you are comfortable on your bike. 

If you aren’t fit, your ride will be tough and you will be exhausted with the ride and not able to enjoy the festivities that make RAGBRAI the celebration that it is.  Likewise, if you are not comfortable on your bike, your 40 hours of riding on RAGBRAI could turn into torture and you don’t want that.

RAGBRAI is supposed to be fun. You don’t want to take a week’s vacation from work to be miserable. You’ve got work for that.  So here are some things to consider about your relationship with your bike to make your ride smooth and enjoyable, assuming that you are fit, of course.

Soften your contact points

You have three contact points with your bike (technically five but hands and feet I’m counting as pairs) – your hands on the handlebars, your feet on the pedals and your seat on your saddle.  Let’s take each one in turn starting with hands.

Hands:

Starting with the bike, make sure you have good padded handlebar tape.  I prefer the cork type of tape which is soft and spongy and helps soften road bumps and vibrations. For the body, I almost always wear cycling gloves for a few reasons. 

• One, it is easier on my hands and provides another layer of cushioning.
• Two, if your hands are sweaty, and they will be in July, gloves help absorb perspiration and prevent your hands from slipping on the handlebars.
• Third, in the unlikely event of a crash, your gloves can help prevent your hands from getting chewed up from hitting the pavement. 

So find a pair of gloves (and a spare pair) that fit well, snug but not too tight, and have ample padding especially on the heel of the hand, which takes a lot of the pressure of the handlebars.  If you don’t wear gloves, you are more likely to experience numbness in your hands.

Feet:

For your feet, I strongly recommend riding RAGBRAI with cycling specific shoes.  Yes, you can do it with tennis or running shoes but these do not have very stiff soles and after a while your feet will get sore from bending as you push on the pedals.  There are a wide variety of shoes and sandals designed for cycling.

The best shoe is one that fits well. You don’t want your toes or sides of your feet pressed against the shoe. After many hours of riding, this will make your feet very sore.

Then comes the question of type of pedals and whether you opt for toe clips or clipless pedals and cleats. If you just go with standard pedals without cleats or toe clips, that’s fine but you still should wear cycling shoes.

Toe clips are those metal bands that fit over the front and top of the foot and have straps that tighten around the feet. Clipless pedals are those which click into the cleats on the bottom of your shoes, locking your feet to the pedals. This helps make your pedaling more efficient as you can both push and pull on the pedals. It does require some getting used to though as you need to learn how to use them and how to pull your feet out quickly or you will fall over – very embarrassing and potentially dangerous if done in an intersection, which is usually where it happens. It also happens when other cyclists are around to witness it.

If you opt for clipless pedals and cleats, there are several brands available. You might want to find one that allows you to walk around in your cycling shoes as there will be a lot of that on RAGBRAI. SPD types are a good example of this. A side note about clipless: clipless refer to pedals that do not have toe clips. However, clipless pedals still clip your feet into the pedals so it’s kind of confusing terminology.

Seat:

The part of your body most likely to get sore (or worse) is your seat. Two important components are your bike saddle and your choice of shorts. It is essential that your bike saddle is comfortable and fits your own seat. There is a wide variety of seats of different shapes, sizes, and softness. There are saddles made specifically for females as well. 

If you are not happy with your current saddle, one of the best investments you can make is to buy a saddle that is comfortable. So visit your bike shop. Most likely they will let you try them out on a test ride. 

Then there is the clothing issue. Yes, you can be like the 70s when RAGBRAI began and wear jean cutoffs but if you want to enjoy RAGBRAI, DO NOT DO THIS! To ignore this is to invite saddle sores, the most extreme torture you can have on a bike!

Regular shorts have seams in the wrong places that come between your seat and your bike’s seat. Also, people wear underwear with regular shorts which is another no-no. If you don’t do anything else, get some bike shorts (and don’t wear underwear under them). These have padding and absorb moisture and are meant to be right against your skin, to make your ride oh so much more comfortable. If you don’t like the looks of the tight fitting lycra ones, they do have regular looking shorts with a chamois liner. So try some on – some have more padding that others – you want the Goldilocks type – not too little, not too much.

Consider a bike-fit

Once you get the contact points addressed, the last thing is to make sure your body conforms to your bike, or actually it’s the other way around – you want your bike to conform to you. 

You want your feet, seat and hands to be in the correct positions while on your bike. You want your saddle height to allow a slight bend in the knee when the foot is at the bottom of the pedal stroke. You want the saddle adjusted fore-aft so that your knee is directly above the pedal at the 3 o’clock position. You want your stem and bike frame the correct length so you aren’t reaching too far forward to hold the handlebars, nor hunched up too much. 

Any bike shop can get you set up correctly. And if you want a customized fitting, consider getting a bike fit. Some shops offer this service. It fine tunes your feet-seat-hands position to allow your bike to perfectly fit your body. These aren’t cheap but a comfortable RAGBRAI is priceless!

Finally, do this sooner rather than later. You want to have time riding with these changes to make sure everything feels good and to make adjustments as necessary. You also need to give your body some time to get used to any changes you may make in your seat height or handlebar positioning.  And if going clipless, you need time to learn to clip and unclip easily and quickly to avoid embarrassment (hint: everyone falls over when learning to use these, myself included).

So long live long rides, in comfort.

Coach David Ertl

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Find all of Coach Ertl’s Training Blogs, as well as the 2025 Training Plan in our Training section on RAGBRAI.com.

David Ertl is a USA Cycling Advanced Certified Coach. He coaches individual cyclists through the Peaks Coaching Group www.peakscoachinggroup.com/davidertl . He also provides cycling training plans and ebooks at his website: www.CyclesportCoaching.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].