Your First Three Years,~ Part 3:

Basic Bike Handling and Safety

A Guide for Beginner (and Experienced!) Cyclists, to the Art and Practice of Cycling.  Becoming Proficient, Fit, and Happy on your bike.

If you’ve been following us so far, you’ve spent the last week getting acquainted with your bike.  You’ve been restricting yourself to short and very local rides.  It’s time to expand on that a bit, and to add a bit of refinement to your riding.

You’re not ready to go out and join group rides yet.  So you’ll still want to confine your riding to your local neighborhood, and to very low traffic roads.  Some of the skills and drills contained in this post should best be practiced in empty parking lots, or similar traffic-free environments.

Controls

By this point we’ve figured out which controls do what…  Sort of.

Let’s refine our terminology a bit.

High Gears:  High gears are ones with a “higher ratio.”  That means that, for every turn of the crank (pedals) the rear wheel turns around more times.

Low Gears:  The converse of “high gears.”  In a lower gear the “ratio” is lower, and each crankstroke will turn the rear wheel around fewer times.

Cassette:  This is the cluster of gears on the rear wheel.

Chainrings:  These are the physically largish gears toward the front of the bike.  They are mounted on the “crank.”  (The thing the pedals are attached to.)

Upshift:  Means shifting from an lower (easier) gear, to a higher (harder) gear.

Downshift:  The opposite of an upshift.  Moving from a higher (harder) gear to a lower (easier) gear.

Front Brake:  This is the one that works on the front wheel, and is controlled by the left hand lever.  (If your front brake is controlled by your right hand lever, either,  A} your bike is built wrong, or B} you are a crazy motorcycle rider.)

Seating and posture:

Does your backside hurt when you ride?  Try this.  Move farther back on the saddle.  You should not be trying to sit on your gluteal muscle group.  The weight of your body should be on your “sit bones.”  These are two boney points or arches in the floor of your pelvic bone.  You can find them by running your fingers along the crease below your glutes.  Move in toward the center of your thighs.  Just before your fingers slide between your thighs, you will find a hard boney pointy thing under the skin.  That’s it!  One on each side.  These are the proverbial “sit bones.”  They should be located in the center of the wide pad of the saddle.

Posture on the bike:

Right from the beginning, learn to unlock your elbows.  Your elbows should point down and back, not out to the sides, and they should be slightly bent.  This allows your biceps to absorb road shock and vibration, which would otherwise be felt in the shoulders and the base of the neck.

You don’t have to raise your head all the way up to see forward.  You can raise your eyes in their sockets.  This lets you put a lot less pressure on the muscles that hold your head up, and relaxes your neck considerably.

Move on the bike!

To avoid fatigue, and remain happy in your riding, you should move around on the bike, frequently.  For the new rider this can present a bit of a challenge.  So let’s take a couple of skills, step-by-step.

Standing Up:

Do this away from traffic!!!!

Get the bike moving, and on level ground.

Position you hands on the “hoods”  (the covering of the levers on a road bike), or firmly on the grips on a “flatbar” bike.

Lower either pedal to the bottom of the crankstroke, and stop pedalling.

Grip the bar firmly, and transfer your weight slowly to the down pedal.

TA DA! You are standing!

Now try this:

While standing, rotate the pedals until they are level.  Still okay?  Good.  Sit down and pedal the bike back up to a stable speed.

Standing to pedal:

Generally standing on the pedals is not nearly as efficient as staying seated.  But there are times when it’s useful.  It can serve as an “active rest” during long rides or climbs, it can be an “emergency boost” to get over a hill, or out of trouble.  Here’s how to learn it.

Begin as above in the Standing Up drill.

Do this away from traffic!!!!

Get the bike moving, and on level ground.

Position you hands on the “hoods”  (the covering of the levers on a road bike), or firmly on the grips on a “flatbar” bike.

Now upshift about two gears harder than you are now in.

Now press down on one pedal as you come out of the saddle.

Keep pedalling! But don’t increase your pedal speed.

Good!  Lots of variations on this one, but you now have the basis to practice the skill.

Learn to look around (& back!!)

It’s fun to be able to look at the world around you as you ride.  More, it can be a huge safety advantage.  Here’s how to get comfortable doing so.

Stability First:

Before moving around, or looking around, move your hands in to the center of the bar.  You control the bike by applying weight to one side of the bar or the other.  (This is how you turn!)  If your hands are near the center, an unintended input will not have as big an effect.

Now,  Look!

Relax the body.

Speed up to a moderate and stable level.

Hands to the bar center.

Now turn your head and look.

If the bike starts to veer, look back ahead!

Road Position (controlling where you are)

New riders tend to wander around in the middle of the road.  This is normal and natural.  We have a fear of falling off the edge, and this balances against a fear of getting too far out and getting clobbered by a car.  But it is best to be stable, steady, predictable, and to ride as far to the right as is practical and safe.

Here’s the magic secret.  Your bike will tend to go where you are looking.  So look where you want to go.  To take up a position to the right hand side of the road, look as far down the road as you can see, and look at the spot six inches to the left of the white line.  Now ride toward where you are looking.  (Do not look down at the ground.  You don’t want to go there!)

Practice this.  You’ll find that you will soon be cruising along, close to the line, and not in fear of falling off.

Signalling:

If you are going to ride in traffic…  And the assumption is that you will  …then you must do two important things.  1)  Be stable and predicatable.  2)  Be able to communicate with other vehicle operators.

Think of your ride as a constant, nonverbal, communication with the other users of the road.  Part of this communication comes from where and how you position yourself on the road.  Part of it depends on how you appear.  Part of it is the intentional signals you make to inform other operators of your intentions.

Uniform Signals.  (For all of these, while you are new, and somewhat less stable, first move your hands in to the center of the bar.  Then you may lift one hand to signal with less effect on the stability and direction of your travel.)

Right Turn:  Method one.  Extend your right arm directly out from your shoulder, parallel to the ground, and point to your intended change of direction.  Method two.  Raise your left arm until your upper arm extends directly from your shoulder and parallel to the ground.  Now bend your elbow so that your forearm is directly up.  This is the old and conventional hand signal used when driving a car.

Left Turn:  Extend the left arm directly out from the shoulder and parallel to the ground.

Stopping:  Extend the left upper arm from the shoulder and parallel to the ground, bend the forearm straight down at the elbow.

The “Look Back”:

This is an essential skill.  It is absolutely necessary to know what traffic is doing around you.  On many occasions you are going to need to be able to move to your left, to make a left turn, to set up a lane change, to avoid an obstacle.  You will need to know that you are not about to cross in front of overtaking traffic.  Your hearing helps, but is not enough.  Mirrors are good and helpful, but they fail, fall off, or get lost, and do so at the worst possible times.  Besides a the act of looking back alerts following vehicle operators that you are about to do something.  Here’s how to accomplish this with safety.  Finally, looking back lets the motorist know that you are looking, and it makes eye contact with them.  That’s important, as it reasssures the motorist, and humanizes you in their eyes.

This is a skill that should be learned and practiced in a parking lot, away from traffic.  The idea is to learn to look back without swerving either into traffic, or off of the road.

Here’s the Drill:

• In a large and open traffic free parking lot
• First practice riding in a straight line toward some definite object  (a light pole, a building corner, a flag pole, etc.) You will have to ride back to your start and repeat several times during this exercise.
• Get good at riding in this straight line.
• Repeat.
• Now, as you ride toward your landmark, slide your hands to the center of the bar.
• Lift your left hand from the bar.  When you can ride straight at your target, one-handed continue to next.
• Now ride toward your landmark, but do so with the left arm and hand extended behind you, pointing directly away from your landmark.  Keep this up until you can ride in a straight line with your left arm and hand pointing directly back along your line.
• Finally, ride straight toward your landmark, pointing straight back, and turn your head.  Look back along your extended pointing arm.
•  
• With a bit of practice you will find that you can ride ahead, point back, and then look back, all without swerving.  With a lot of practice, you’ll eventually be able to take a solid look back without the pointing, and without swerving. 

There!  That was quite a lot of ground to cover.  These exercises, and drills will equip you with some valuable skills and confidence.  Practice them over the next week.  Practice at least one on each and every ride.  You’ll be working on these pretty regularly for the next year, and should “refresh” throughout the rest of your cycling career.

Bon Chance

Next week: Bike Handling Essential & Emergency Skills

~//~

This series began with the post on Tuesday, 19 June 2012.  It is intended to continue for three years.  Each week, we will discuss exercises, skills, practices, and activities designed to bring the new (or “experienced”) rider a high level of cycling competence.  We’ll address common problems, and (always) stress safe practice.

~//~

A Note on Timing:  This series uses Mid-June as the starting point of the “Cyclists Year.”  We do this because this is the time that most folks decide to start riding.  If you are following this guide, you can “adjust” the timing to fit your personal “first three years.”  Do note that some of the posts will concern weather and seasonal changes.  When that starts to happen, just swap the “months” around to fit your personal timeline.