Beginner Bicycling 101 Part 2

Well it is time to ride. First lets do a quick check of your leg length. With bigger feet you need to raise the seat post a bit higher. We will raise the seat a bit at a time.

The old fashioned training in me, had us check your elbow/finger tip to the handlebars reach. I have always used a 4 inch (10cm) reach, with a 4 inch drop from a level seat unless I was time trialing.

The first thing we did, was to encourage you to keep your elbows slightly bent, to absorb the shock of the bumps in the road.

Then you dropped a few gears so that your spin was up around a 100rpm, and I encourage you blip,blip blip.  :)

We then tried having you stand up and grab the brake hoods in a harder gear and at slower rpm. This will need to be practised standing up and sitting down until it comes naturally. Get your full body weight on the pedals pulling on the bars like a dead lift.

I warned you about the parallel cracks to your line of travel that are filled with tar. It was mentioned to cross cracks like train tracks, bridge expansion joints etc, as close to 90' as possible. At a later date, you will learn to jump train tracks and the like.

It was raining out and you learned that you should feather the brakes to dry the brake rims.

Also going around high speed corners your inside knee is up, and your weight is on the outside pedal, with the hip pushed to the inside of the corner and shoulders over the outside pedal, just like if you were downhill skiing carving a turn. This will need to be practised more.

Going downhill you learned how to get into a comfortable tuck with knees wrapped around the top tube or if real steep the inner thigh squeezes the seat.

On the flats we had you go hard for just over half a km or so, Spinning at around 100rpm the gears got harder, till you could no longer keep the 100rpm and then up another gear, till you were able to keep the spin. The elbows were kept level with the ground and the back flat. Flexibility and getting the glut muscles working hard, will get the power to the pedals.  

Once you have acquired clip in pedals, practising round pedalling will be another lesson.

There was just one more thing that we touch on and that was on cycle stretching while riding. Stretching the calf muscles, the back, and the quads while riding is something that comes in handy at times. In the last 5 minutes we shifted to a very easy gear.

Part 3 will coming after you have done 20 hours of homework, ie. cycling. Hopefully see you in about 10 days.