Cycling in comfort and style
al_kidder
Posts: 73
I see a lot of advocacy for going commando in this forum. That's all very well, but I find that wearing shorts that have padding made from artificial fibres results in a bit of abrasion to my bum. Admittedly, I do lot more kilometres than most of you reading this (just went past 20,000 km for the year today) and I live in Australia, so there's probably more sweat involved.
What I've found is a solution to the problem is to make my own shorts. It takes about an hour to knock up a pair from less than $10 worth of material. The secret is to use cotton lycra for the padding. What you have to do is sew three or four layers together to make the pad. These shorts got tested out through the last summer, which was admittedly a bit cool, but still warm enough for me to sweat about 3 kg on most rides. Then I took them up to Queensland for a fortnight's holiday riding every day. The shorts with artificial padding drew a little bit of blood, but the homemade shorts were just fine. By the way, I found the nicest hill I've ever ridden from Gordon Vale up to the top of the range (that's a little bit south of Cairns) with a rise of about 800 m over 18 km. The view was over cane fields until the road got closed out by rainforest. Coming back down the surface is as good as any anywhere and I think Wikipedia mentions 260 corners. Not too many cars and I enjoyed it so much that I rode it three times.
Anyway, if you want to get a good pattern to make your own shorts, you'll find a Canadian company called Green Pepper has a good one. The only proviso I'll put on that is that the way they make the padding is not right. You end up with a seam right under your balls. Luckily, it's easily fixed by sewing a patch over it which probably also adds a bit of strength against the seam coming undone.
And you can make the shorts as colourful as you can find lycra to do it with, instead of boring black.
What I've found is a solution to the problem is to make my own shorts. It takes about an hour to knock up a pair from less than $10 worth of material. The secret is to use cotton lycra for the padding. What you have to do is sew three or four layers together to make the pad. These shorts got tested out through the last summer, which was admittedly a bit cool, but still warm enough for me to sweat about 3 kg on most rides. Then I took them up to Queensland for a fortnight's holiday riding every day. The shorts with artificial padding drew a little bit of blood, but the homemade shorts were just fine. By the way, I found the nicest hill I've ever ridden from Gordon Vale up to the top of the range (that's a little bit south of Cairns) with a rise of about 800 m over 18 km. The view was over cane fields until the road got closed out by rainforest. Coming back down the surface is as good as any anywhere and I think Wikipedia mentions 260 corners. Not too many cars and I enjoyed it so much that I rode it three times.
Anyway, if you want to get a good pattern to make your own shorts, you'll find a Canadian company called Green Pepper has a good one. The only proviso I'll put on that is that the way they make the padding is not right. You end up with a seam right under your balls. Luckily, it's easily fixed by sewing a patch over it which probably also adds a bit of strength against the seam coming undone.
And you can make the shorts as colourful as you can find lycra to do it with, instead of boring black.
0
