- Coming up are 11 little hacks
that will make your cycling life better,
easier, or both.
- Right, first up, bib shorts.
Notoriously messy items
in your kick bag or in your drawer at home.
So here is your solution.
Goes at the end of the legs,
start rolling up
all the way,
then wrap the bib part of the shorts around,
figure of eight,
over the top,
and there are your bib shorts, neatly packaged.
And quickly onto the next one, which is related.
You can do a similar thing with leg warmers,
arm warmers, and even skin suit.
So leg warmers, arm warmers,
start from the smaller end,
by the ankle or the wrist end.
Fold yourself up all the way,
and when you get to the top,
get one of the leg ends
and fold it over the rest of the neat package,
and there you go.
- I can honestly say, Dan,
I've never seen either of those two things
before in my entire career.
- And then, with a skin suit,
start off from the arm end,
roll up all the way down to the legs,
and then use one of the legs to fold over just like that,
it's a nice, small, neat package.
- Have you ever got stuck in the middle of nowhere
with a hole in your tyre?
Well, even if you haven't got something
with you to repair it,
you can still solve this problem.
- Yeah, all you need is something to cover the hole.
So even if you haven't got something specific, as Matt said,
you can use an empty wrapper, an empty bar wrapper,
you can use a bank note, or you can even try using
a strong-looking green leaf.
- Or even a Christmas card as I did several years ago.
True.
- Next up, on the off chance
that you've got a bottle of wine at home but no corkscrew,
don't despair,
because as long as you've got a truck pump
and a needle adapter
normally used for some kind of football,
then you'll still be able to do it.
- You certainly will, just poke the needle adapter
in between the edge of the bottle and the cork,
start pumping, and voila.
- Hey, presto.
This one might need a bit more work.
We have seen it done before, successfully.
But that was by professionals,
not amateurs.
- Doing long rides on a really hot day
will often mean you have to keep reapplying your sunscreen,
which can be really annoying
because you've got to carry around a big tube with you.
- Yeah, so what you want is a much smaller alternative.
So here are two options.
Firstly, you could use a shampoo container,
which you got free from a hotel room,
and fill that up with sunscreen,
or you could use some contact lens containers,
and the handy thing with them is
there are two of them, so you can use one for sunscreen
and the other one, as Matt does, for lip balm.
He gets dry lips.
We will often see certain pro riders
double wrapping bar tape for extra comfort,
particularly over the cobbled races, such as Paris-Roubaix.
Well, if you want something very similar
without the cost of buying brand new bike tape,
then here is an alternative.
So if you unwrap the bar tape you've got
and then you use an old inner tube underneath
before re-wrapping it all back up,
and you've got two layers.
- You certainly have, the only preparation you need to do
is to cut the valve, of course,
and then cut the inner tube
to length before applying like tape.
- Right, you're gonna like this next one, Matt,
even though I know you know about it.
Bidons, or water bottles, actually serve as more
than just something to keep you hydrated,
because if you get an old one and you cut around the top,
they make a nice little container
in which you can put your spares
and your inner tubes, et cetera,
or maybe even your rain jacket,
you then put in your back bottle cage,
keeping it nice and neat.
- Recycling, really.
Another alternative that you see pro mechanics use is
to cut the bidon off and actually use it
to hold de-greaser as they clean the bikes, too.
- If you happen to have to fix your bike
whilst your out on a training run,
and likely it is you're gonna get pretty mucky hands,
which can spell disaster if you've got white bar tape.
So here's a trick.
Pick up a couple of those free plastic gloves that you get
at filling or fuel stations
and stash them in your saddlebag
or wherever you keep your spares.
Simply put them on before you carry out your repairs
and you'll keep your hands nice and clean.
- Or you could ask your mate to do it
if you're out on a ride,
or if you're not out on a ride with a mate
and you're on your own, you could use
those individually sealed handy wipes,
the type you get on an airline,
they're pretty handy, too.
- This, Matt, is a handy little adapter
which you can find very cheaply online,
which will convert your Presta valve
into a Schrader one.
Now, the reason this is handy is if you're out on a run,
you've got this in your saddlebag
or wherever you keep your spares,
if you do puncture and you can't get your tyre back up
to the kind of pressure that you'd like,
the next time you get to a garage or fuel station
that's got an air compressor pump,
simply put that on your valve,
use the air compressor pump, carefully,
to get your tyre easily up to the desired pressure.
- That, Dan, is a hack-and-a-half.
Want to know how to store an inner tube
that's got air in it,
because these are always a little bit awkward.
Dan, take it away.
- Okay, this is how you do it.
Get the valve at the opposite end to you,
then just a case
of neatly folding it up towards the valve.
(funk music)
But we're not finished.
You then want to unravel it,
put the valve between the two sides of the inner tube,
grab it neatly up that way.
Then elastic band.
Neatly packaged inner tube.
- Genius.
Got your cycling shoes wet but need to dry them quickly?
Well, here's an old trick to help speed up that process.
Get some newspaper and stuff them into your shoes.
- Yeah, the paper will absorb the water.
So, after a couple of hours, replace it with new newspaper,
leave it overnight,
hey, presto, the next morning,
your shoes should be almost bone dry.
As an alternative, you can try using diapers,
or nappies as we call them here.
The ultimate in absorbance.
- But never, ever, ever put your shoes in the oven
as one of my friends found out,
well, his shoes caught fire, basically.
- So, there you have it, some great hacks for you.
We've got some more hacks for you just up here
to do with training.
- And we have our roadside maintenance list
just down here.
- And you might want to subscribe to GCN,
it's that button in the middle which says subscribe.
- It certainly does, just in there.