We rode cobbles too rough for Paris-Roubaix!

With endless sectors of bone-rattling cobblestones and rutted roads, Paris-Roubaix serves up one of the hardest, if not the hardest, parcours in professional cycling. Only the toughest make it to the finish line, let alone get the opportunity to hoist the cobblestone trophy above their heads after emerging victorious in the Roubaix Velodrome.

The mystique and sheer brutality of the race is hard to comprehend, so we decided to send Conor Dunne and James ‘Hank’ Lowsley-Williams across to France on a recon mission to find out just how bad the roads really are.

Our dynamic duo aren’t WorldTour pros - although Conor did once grace many WorldTour races - so we couldn’t expect them to complete the full 257km that the elite men will tackle in 2024. Instead, Conor devised a slightly shorter 125km route, except he decided to make up for the shorter distance by taking a slight diversion across the Belgian border to include some lesser-known cobbled roads that aren’t a fixture in the professional races.

There was no easing into the ride, either, with the route starting in the iconic Forest of Arenberg, a five-star sector where the race regularly explodes to pieces.

Read more: Average Joe vs the Tour of Flanders: How much fitness has Cillian Kelly gained with help of Wahoo SYSTM

Luckily for Conor and Hank, they were also equipped with cobble-ready bikes for the job, in the form of Canyon’s Grizl and the Moots Vamoots, respectively. Both are great bikes as standard, but to give them a little extra edge on the rough stuff, Redshift kindly added their ShockStop suspension seatpost and ShockStop suspension stem to the bikes.

The seatpost offers 20mm of active travel through its unique combo of elastomers and springs and can be tuned to an individual rider's weight and preferences, so you can get the suspension you need for a given terrain. Like the seatpost, the stem also delivers 20mm of travel and can be adjusted through swappable elastomers.

Together, Redshift’s components provided a welcome relief from the rugged cobbles of Roubaix for our pair, but you don’t have to be riding Roubaix to experience the benefits, as Conor found out last year when he used the suspension stem during his Unbound attempt.

Our presenters were in good hands then, but were they capable of piloting the bikes successfully to the end of their route at the Roubaix Velodrome? Watch the full video at the top of this page to find out.

Check out more of our challenges on the GCN website.