In an article we published last year, nutrition expert Matt Hart explained that most people only have enough “endogenous carbohydrate reserves” to sustain a maximal effort for around 2.5 hours. This means that on longer rides, it’s essential to keep replenishing energy levels with extra carbohydrates, typically gels or energy bars. The challenge, of course, is figuring out how to carry and access them easily while riding. Restrap’s Race Top Tube Bag might be the ideal solution. Read on to see our thoughts on it…
Restrap describe their Race Top Tube Bag as “Durable and lightweight…..designed with ultra-distance racing and audaxing in mind.” Top tube bags, or bento boxes as they are colloquially known, have been around for more than a decade and fulfil a niche, but vital, role for cyclists of all disciplines who need extra storage capacity on long rides. Although they are generally used to store/carry items such as energy gels/bars/gums, you can carry a multitude of (lightweight) items in them.
Restrap’s Race Top Tube Bag is their top-of-the-range offering and it comes in three different sizes - short, medium and long, which translate to 1.2, 1.5 and 2.0 litres of capacity. We’ve been testing the short (1.2L) variant. The bag is constructed from a “TPX technical waterproof outer” and comes fitted with a “YKK aquaguard zip” to make it as weatherproof as possible. The bag has one main zipped pocket and two smaller elasticated mesh side pockets. The bag has a “rigid internal plastic structure” and “a foam base to add structure and prevent rattle while on the move.” The bag offers both “bolt-on” and “strap-on” mount options, depending on whether your gravel bike frame has the necessary top tube mounting points or not.
The bag weighs 120g, including the optional strap and is 240mm long, 120mm tall and 45mm wide. As well as the bolt-on anchor points and the optional “fast strap”, the bag comes with a “universal headset fitting” which offers some additional belt-and-braces security and helps reduce unwanted movement to the absolute minimum.
Depending on how precious you are about the paintwork on your bike, it might be worth considering adding some helitape protection to your top tube and stem before you mount the bag for the first time. That way, even if you’re riding in wet/gritty/sandy conditions, any movement of the bag won’t cause abrasions to your paintwork. This isn’t mandatory, and thanks to its great design, any movement of the bag is very limited, but it’s better to try to prevent any problems in advance rather than have to fix them afterwards.
The first time you mount a top tube bag it might look a little jarring and you’ll find that when you swing your leg over the saddle, you might knock it. But, after five minutes of riding, you’ll forget all about it and on longer/more challenging rides, the ability to easily access extra energy supplies (or anything else that you want to store in there) easily outweighs the minor disadvantages.
Everyone’s pedalling style differs, but if you know that you ride ‘knees-in’, you might notice that the inside of your knees brush the sides of the top tube bag with each pedal revolution. The bag is only 45mm wide, so it’s not significantly wider than a typical top tube, but it is something to be aware of. You can reduce the likelihood of knee rubbing by careful placement of the contents inside the bag – if you try and stack the items vertically, you reduce the chances of ‘inflating’ the bag widthways and so reduce the potential for rubbing. Fortunately, even if your knees rub, the material is soft enough that it won’t cause any damage to your clothing or skin.
The real test for a top tube mounted bag is how easy it is to use one-handed, particularly while riding on rough surfaces. The good news is that Restrap’s bag passes this test with flying colours – the combination of the reinforced base, which holds your bag tightly and offers rigidity, plus the smoothness of the YKK waterproof zip, means you can easily open the bag one-handed and access whatever you need from the inside. We tended to use it just for storing/carrying energy products, so we were accessing it pretty frequently. Once we’d consumed whatever we’d taken out, the empty wrapper could be rolled up and stored in the external elasticated pocket. This meant there was much less chance of inadvertently dropping the it on the roadside and it meant you didn’t have to store the (frequently sticky) plastic in your jersey pocket.
We’ve been completely won over by Restrap’s Race Top Tube Bag and it will be finding its way onto our bikes whenever we’ve got big rides planned in the future. The bag retails for £59.99 and you can find all the details over on Restrap’s website.