Any of those who wear contacts have this problem?

I’ve been getting recently an issue where at speed the wind is sort of dislodging my left contact, which results in me having to blink a fair bit to try to get it to sit back in place. This happens even though I’m wearing the shades/glasses (Madison D’arcs).

Oddly it’s only ever the left contact but possibly there’s a difference as the right eye has a toric lens but the left is a standard.

It’s got to the point now where it caused lack of concentration at speed over roots, slide, OTB, head visit to the ground 😀

I’m wondering if a change in contact may help, i.e. something a bit more sticky. The toric one seems fine and my left eye does have a tiny bit of astigmatism but the optician didn’t think I needed a toric lens for that one. I could try one though.

Or different glasses. Something a bit more wrap around so that it eliminates wind in the eye.

It’s odd that it’s only recent, as in the last few months. I’m on a subscription of monthly lenses so maybe they changed something. That or my eyes are changing. I’m getting to that point where I’m realising some day I’ll need reading glasses! 🙁

I have the issue but with toric lenses! Tried both goggles & glasses and the wind seems to lift the lenses away, In the end – heli-tape over the vents but still found problems and bizarrely riding with just contacts I’ve had no problems : /

I know exactly how you feel. Iv’e been wearing contacts for 14 years and in the last 2 years i keep getting the same problem. It kinda feels like the wind is trying to suck the lens out my eye (always just one eye) and it causes me to blink lots.

I even find if i look straight ahead and blink the lens gets pulled up when my eyelid opens. I have to blink and look right every time.

My optician told me my eyelid had swollen slightly due to a mild infection. The cure was to wear glasses for a week or so when this happens, but when this happens on a weekly basis it really isn’t a long term solution.

I then tried switching from ‘night & day’ lenses to regular monthly lenses which have reduced the problems a fair bit.

The long term solution for me is lazer eye surgery which i was quoted 3k for (due to very large pupils) so not for a few years.

A piece of advice from a fellow contact lens wearer who recently had a slam dunk otb due to carrying on while trying to blink grit out of one eye… Stop if you can’t see!

i use a toric lens in my left eye, and occasionally get the symptoms you describe.
i get them when i get a draught blowing in the eye, so id be tempted to try a larger/closer fitting pair of glasses.
glasses, like saddles, are somewhat of a personal thing, what fits me may not fit you very well, so you will need to try a few different pairs.

Stop if you can’t see!

I’m with you there. It’s just it was a familiar trail, over confidence and thinking “ah it will be okay in a minute” and then realising too late that it was going to go badly wrong 😀

yep, had this loads, but moreso when skiing (faster speeds). I gave up wearing lenses for cycling because of it. Tried a few different brands of lenses too. Optician tells me there is a new toric lens out later this year that looks like a better option so will keep fingers crossed. In the meantime I either put up with it or ride without (and slower).

My optician is amazing. She’s had me trialling 4 sets of different lenses recently to eradicate the same issue you’re having and we’ve finally reached a point by where it no longer happens but i couldn’t tell you what she’s done. I think she’s played a round with circumference, thickness etc.
She did explain something about toric which you may already know or be interested in “With a standard lens it spins around all day but isn’t a problem because they’re round. A toric lens isn’t round, so if it does manage to spin round it will become very uncomfortable because it’s not sat on your eye properely. So toric lenses are weighted in certain positions to prevent them from spinning round”

I used to get it the other way round, my toric lens would never stay where it was put, so I stopped using it and just use 2 plain ones. But that’s not helpful!

OTOH I did find my D’arcs to be absolutely pish. Have you tried any others?

I’ve just stuck with the D’arcs but I keep scratching the lenses way too easily. I’ve got loads of them because I wrecked one in a crash and bought another set but that left me with spare lenses and then got some cheap replacements after scratching more.

Been meaning to try others though. I refuse to pay crazy high prices on Oakleys and the like. I stopped paying those prices in the early days when I had prescription glasses and smashed them up. That’s why I wear the contacts now.

Think I’ll have a chat with the optician though.

What’s a toric lens?
I use old Acuvue 2s and never had this problem!

A toric lens needs to be the correct way as the prescription changes as they rotate. The bottom of the lens is thicker to keep it at the bottom (although it can be offset if your lens tends to rotate a particular way). When they rotate the vision goes blurry. They also normally have some marks in them so you can put them in without waiting for them to rotate.

I occasionally have problems at speed, but I notice it more in the car when I have the aircon on my face. Both wind and aircon will dry the eye, making your eyes feel tired and also making the lens stick so it doesn’t recenter or rotate easily.

Toric adjusts for astigmatism, which many people have. Glasses can easily correct it but you might not be aware of it in your prescription.

With Toric lenses they only work in a certain direction so they have markings to show which way round they go. When that was explained to me it was the first I knew that I had astigmatism.

Meh, too slow. What they said ^.

I run toric .. never had this problem.

Most lense issue I find though occur when I’m (even fairly mildely if at the end of the day) dehydrated. Or get dry eyes as above from say car air con

My glasses when riding are a little more closely fitted than say D’Arcs, which maybe something .. so not as much windrush taking the moisture away.

In fact I generally just use 3M Safety Glasses They’re cheap, in clear or tint, and have even been mistaken for Oakleys by someone once!! believe it or not

I can’t recommend Bolle safety glasses highly enough. I’ve been riding fo 20 years with lenses and can say I’ve never had ‘wind’ issues on my eyes when wearing any of my sunglasses or clear safety specs. Try different designs – the Bolle ones are cheap as chips and they even do tinted ones.

A toric lens needs to be the correct way

Ah thanks. Maybe that’s why I don’t get the problem.

I use toric lenses and I’ve not had this problem on my MTB where I wear sunglasses, but I have had it on my enduro motorbike. On that I use goggles which have a lot of ventilation holes to stop them steaming up, and it seems to blow air down onto my contacts and I sometimes have to blink them back into place. Only usually happens on the road though, when we’re at higher speeds. In the end I taped over some of the holes in the goggles to reduce the airflow and that cured it.

I tried contacts two or three times in recent years; each time I found them too much of a faff and too uncomfortable and went back to glasses.

Stop using contacts and get some prescription glasses. changed my riding beyond measure.

i bought mine through http://www.extreme-eyewear.co.uk and they were brilliant.

honestly, i cannot believe how much better it is not having to use contacts.

If you are worried about cost/damage implications, go for some with the RX insert (Rudy project for example) that way only the insert is prescription and less like to break in the event of a fall and you can change lenses for different conditions.

I prefer the freedom of contacts in that I can take shades off for a chat, pub, wherever. With prescription I’d have to wear them to see and means changing lens for conditions. Though I have multi lenses on the D’arcs when going into dark tree areas it’s easier to just take them off until I’m out. And then in the Alps the rain and mud in Morzine was biblical and I had to take the glasses off to see. But then I kept getting mud in the eyes and behind the contacts, which is not nice. I could have worn goggles with tear offs but think I’d have gone through them within minutes.

what puts me off prescription sunglasses is what to do when the lenses mist up when working hard or how they will work when going into a dark forest unless they are photochromatic which adds expense. Oh and the possiblity of me sitting on the most expensive glasses I am likely to buy!

I went from my d’arcs to bolle bl10 safety glasses, much better- wider coverage and closer fit. Course, fit is a personal thing but you don’t need to spend a fortune to get good results.

I have exactly the same problem with regular contact lenses – left eye only. It only happens when I’m concentrating (probably too hard) and I think what happens is that I stop blinking during those periods. As a result, the lens dries out and which then seems to allow the wind to start working it out.
2 things that have worked prevent it are:
Relax a bit more (normal blinking) when going fast through techie sections.
Disposable lenses – I spoke to my optician who provided me with several different types of lenses to try. The daily disposables haven’t blown out yet, and if they do, they’re relatively cheap to replace, compared to my regular continuous wear lenses.

Hope that helps on some way! 8)

Cheers all. Quite surprised it’s a common issue. Plenty of options to try to solve it 🙂

CAn be a problem if your lens is too flat fitting which will cause it to move more, especially if the wind is making your eye water slightly.

Toric CL’s generally tend to be larger, with more overlap around the cornea, generally the larger diameter/ greater surface area “sticks” to the eye more.

A possibility for your non-toric eye is to fit a steeper or larger lens or both, maybe even a low powered toric lens (there may be a small amount of astigmatism to be corrected in that eye). You have to be careful with too tight a lens as they can cause a few problems of their own.

Explain the problem to your optom & they should advise you on a few possibilities

Yeah the non-toric eye does have slight astigmatism. Optician always said it wasn’t worth going toric in that eye, but for this maybe it’s worth a try. Don’t think it’s much more. Contact prices seem pretty cheap now anyway, I don’t pay much for my monthlys.

I never have the issues you describe – but then again my eyes tend to be pretty dry so the contacts usually need peeling off at the end of the day, plus I don’t wear glasses for riding. It’s possible that wearing glasses = less wind to dry your eyes out = moist eyes = lenses fall out more easily.

If you’re gonna try some different lenses, you can do a lot worse than GetLenses.nl. I order my daily disposables from there, they cost about half what they do from the high street and delivery is usually about 2 days – very convenient. There’s a discount code for 10% off your first order, too. (There’s the whole LBS loyalty vs bike-discount.de debate for this as well).

It’s possible that wearing glasses = less wind to dry your eyes out = moist eyes = lenses fall out more easily.

This is the opposite of what my optician is saying. She has suggested I use a lens moisturiser which should help the (toric) lenses sit in their correct orientation and not “flap around”. I use my lenses for riding.

I’m not an optician so probably best to go with the professional advice on this one. My understanding is that the OP’s toric lens is fine though, it’s his normal lens that’s the problem.

I’ve found it much better without any glasses/goggles & using both a mucky nuts thing and a flappy mudguard – do struggle on stupid gritty rides mind.

I have 1 toric and 1 normal. Every so often I get the same problem but the eye is different. I put mine down to differing level of moisture I the eye. Neither are anywhere as near as irritating as glasses with the wind behind them. Try to work out if something like the odd eye drop helps the dodgy lens to stick.