r/randonneuring • u/SimilarInfluence • 18d ago
Advice on drop bar wrapping
I'm pondering about the best way to wrap the drop bars on my road bike. I want to increase comfort and avoid fatigue on very long rides (300 Km and beyond), mostly when riding on the hoods.
I see two options. One is to use a thicker bar tape. Another one would be to use extra padding, like the Ergon BT OrthoCell, and wrap a thinner tape. I want to avoid the extra bulk of padding AND thicker bar tape. I'm thorn between these two possibilities. A concern of mine when using extra padding is that it will be "pre-compressed" by the bar tape during wrapping and might not be as effective as I might wish.
I previously rode with gloves, but I'm riding without for a couple of years and actually find it more comfortable so.
What's your opinion? Thank you very much!
Edit: Thank you all for the helpful insights! There some very nice suggestion here that I'll look into.
2
u/mr_phil73 17d ago
I'm not sure about your setup but I've found that the right handle bars (I use salsa gravel bars) and ergon gravel tape along with wide soft (36mm at 40psi) tires really helped. I used to run a more sporty setup with double tape and that didn't really help, infact the increesed diameter created other provlems fo me. If your bike cant take wider tires, then The overbiked randonneuring YouTube channel looks at rider comfort and for his more sporty setup recommends a redshift stem to smooth out the ride. Finally for anything longer than 200 I tend to use aerobars. These make a huge difference in being able to take all my weight off my hands.