A Guide for Beginner (and Experienced!) Cyclists, to the Art and Practice of Cycling. Becoming Proficient, Fit, and Happy on your bike.
Let’s start with
a sort of summation. There are
three “B-4s” in cycling.
Eat Before
you are hungry.
Dring Before
you are thirsty.
Shift Before
you need to!
Today we want to
focus a bit on those first two. Then
we can move on to some truly important handling skills.
Eating and Drinking on the bike:
Honest, it is important to eat and drink while you
ride. It’s not so critical while
you are taking shorter rides, but as your time in the saddle increases, you will
need to eat and drink during your
rides.
Drink first! Here’s how.
Practice this a bit, in a safe place, well away from traffic. Start with the technique we discussed
last week. Move your hands in to
the center of the bar. This will
help you stabilize the bike as you lift one hand from the bar. Now, DO NOT LOOK DOWN!
Instead, feel your way down
along the headtube of the bike, then along the down tube, until you come to the
top of the front bottle.
(Hint: This is a good time
to pull the valve of the bottle open.
Do it before you remove the
bottle from the cage.) Now slide
your hand farther down, until it is around the main body of the bottle. Grasp firmly, and pull the bottle up
and forward, out of the cage.
Next, straighten
up slowly, and raise the bottle until the valve is next to your mouth. (Keep the bottle to the side, so you
don’t obscure your vision forward.)
Drink! Squeeze the bottle to squirt some water
into your mouth, then swallow.
When you are
finished with your drink, you will want to return the bottle to the cage. Use the base of the bottle to feel your way along the downtube to the
cage. Then press the bottle into
the cage, while still holding it.
Don’t let go of the bottle until you have secured it in the cage.
Eating on the bike:
This is a bit more difficult.
I do not advocate attempting to ride “hands free.” Most food things require two hands to
get opened. More, unfortunately,
most of us don’t have team cars or domestiques to come along and hand food up
to us. So the strategy has to
consider ways and means to eat one-handed. Some more solid items lend themselves to this. Open packages first, before the ride, so that this kind of
food is accessible. But possibly a
better tactic is to plan to take a short
break every 20 to 25 miles. Pull
over, get off of the road, dismount, and eat your snack. (Keep this kind of stop short and your legs will not stiffen
up.)
In a future post,
we’ll discuss more aspects of hydration and nutrition, but for now, start
working on eating before the ride,
drinking before the ride, and your
in-the-saddle drinking skills.
Bike Handling:
Taking the Corners.
It’s important to remember that the thing that keeps a bike upright is a
bit of physics. Rotating masses (in this case wheels)
do some magic. They tend to resist
being shifted out of position.
When one does apply force to
the center of the wheel, it reacts in an odd way. If a force is applied to the axel in one direction, the
wheel tends to move at 90 degrees to that force. (Sound complicated?
It’s not. Keep reading.)
If the axel is
forced to turn to the left (say by moving the handlbar that way), the wheel
will try to lean to the right. In a similar fashion, if the axel is
force to turn around the bike’s forward axis (by pushing down on one side and
pulling up on the other) the wheel
will tend to turn. If the down force is on the left side
of the axel, with the bike moving forward, the wheel will try to turn to the
left.
All this is
completely counter-intuitive. It’s
best to go out to your big, wide, safe,
no-traffic area and do some experimenting.
Get the bike up
to a low-moderate speed. Say 10 to
12 mph. Then hold the handlbars in
a straight-ahead position, and gradually lean apply weight with your hand to
one side of the bar. The bike
tries to turn to that side, doesn’t it?
In fact, this is how a turn is initiated, and one follows the wheel lean by turning the bar.
After you’ve
experimented with this, we’ll work on a couple more skills.
Leaning with the bike.
Turning the bike is a bit of a balancing act. As the bike leans over to turn, there are two forces applied to the tire. One is the acceleration to the side,
and the other is the down-force of the weight of the bike and the rider. That side-ward acceleraction is
generated by friction between the tire and the ground as the wheel changes
direction. Now here comes the tricky
part. Mr. Isaac Newton tells us
that the whole shebang will resist
any acceleration. So the bike
“wants” to keep travelling in a straight line. (This is that “centrifugal” force you’ve heard about.) If the turn is sharp enough, the
friction between the tired and the pavement is broken, and the bike skids. This last is much more likely to happen if the rider is trying to keep the bike
completely upright.
To corner well,
the bike must be leaned into the
turn. The best and easiest way to
do this it to lower your body down closer to the bike, and then follow it as it
leans into the turn. Remember,
turning is accomplished by first “weighting” one side of the bar, and then
following the bike’s turn with a gentle lean and a turn of the bar.
The Instant Turn.
There are times when something
happens in front of the bike, something abrupt. Often it is far better to steer around the problem, than to try and hit
the brakes and attempt to stop before hitting it. This requires an aggressive, high-performance turn, not the gentle banking we just
discussed. It is possible to make
the bike turn almost immediately, using some of the same physics we just
discussed.
Here’s the tactic
in a short form. To begin the
“instant turn,” turn the handlbar, but turn it away from the direction of the new turn. The bike will lean sharply in the direction opposite to the bar turn. Then, as the bike leans, lean with it,
and follow the turn quickly with the
bar.
For example,
suppose you are cruising down a street, and a parked car’s door suddenly opens
in front of you. You are going to
need to turn left, and do it quickly. In this case, the handlbar is turned right to initiate the turn, then as the bike leans suddenly and
sharply left, the rider leans with it, and follows
the lean into the turn by
bringing the bar around to the left.
This manuver
takes practice. I’d recommend doing it in a traffic
free area. Do not use clipless pedals or toe clips! Always wear your
helmet. And be ready to straighten
out, if things are getting out of hand.
As usual, start practicing this manuver at lower speeds, and gradually increase speed as you build
familiarity and proficiency.
Braking:
This can seem simple. But not really.
Many folks are scared pale at the mere thought of ever touching the front brake. There is this urban folklore that if one should ever happen
to engage the front brake, the rider will then instantly burst into flames and
be hurled forward, off of the bike, into the air, and will come to rest in a
tangled, broken, smoldering heap, never to rise again. Come now. Let us reason together. In this litigeous age, would a manufacturer dare to install such a device on a
product? Yes, if mis-used, or over-applied,
the front brake can cause problems, and lead to injury. So can table salt.
The truth of the
matter is that the front brake is the stronger of the bike’s two brakes, and is
the most useful. But it does require skill to use it
effectively. Fortunately, that
skill can be acquired by any reasonably intelligent and coordinated rider. (If my brother can figure it out, honest the rest of you can!)
Before going on,
we recommend you go back to the post of June 26 There you will find some instruction and a drill for learning
to control the front brake. Id you
haven’t already done so, start by working on that drill and skill. Once you have gotten comfortable with
routine handling of both brakes (and especially the front one) you will be
ready to continue to the following work.
Sudden stop. There
are two keys to this manuver.
First, learn what your front
brake is capable of, and how to control it. Second, get your weight down
and back. If you’ve followed our suggestion above, and reviewed basic
braking drills, you are about ready for the “Sudden Stop.” As with the beginning braking drills,
practice this one in a safe location, free of traffic.
Begin by taking
the bike up to a modest speed. Now
scoot back to the farhest rearward extreme of the saddle. Level your cranks and flex your legs. Lower your upper body, down low, while
extending your arms to move your body rearward.
From this
position, apply both brakes. Make this a brisk application, but not a severe one. Repeat, gradually increasing the
braking power with each repetition.
One of the things you are looking for here is the “lockup point.” That is the force of brake application
which will cause the wheel to lock and skid.
Skidding is not the fastest possible stop. In a skid, the tires have broken
traction with the pavement surface and are sliding, with little loss of
speed. The key concept here is modulation. You are modulating
when you are changing pressure on the brake levers, to hold the bike just below the lockup point. If either wheel starts to lockup and
slide, reduce the pressure on that lever.
The idea behind this kind of stop is to keep the tires just short of lockup. In other words, when the bike is going
at 10 mph, the wheels should be turning at about 9.9 mph. Practice this!
Once you are good
with a hard stop from a lower speed, increase the speed a bit and repeat the
drill. This one does take practice, but it is well worth
the effort. A modern bicycle can
be stopped in a remarkably short distance, even from a high speed.
Rock dodge. Often,
if the front tire hits a larger obstacle, it can be deflected, and cause a
spill. Sometimes the rider gets
very little warning about such an obstacle. The idea is to steer the front of the bike around the rock
(obstacle) very quickly, and back onto course again. Usually the rear wheel will hit the rock (obstacle) but this
doesn’t cause more than a bit of a jolt.
To practice this
one, I recommend taking a damp sponge to your practice area. You can use the sponge to simulate your
“rock” with no fear of bad consequences if you hit it.
Place the sponge
on the ground. Ride up to it, and just before the front wheel rolls over
it, do the following. Turn the
wheel sharply to one side, and then
bring it back in the opposite direction.
Properly done, this should steer the front wheel around the sponge (rock) and back onto the original course. The rear wheel will usually roll over
the sponge.
Once again,
practice this at lower speeds first, and gradually increase speed as your skill
and confidence build. (Wearing
your clipless shoes, and being clipped in is not recommended for this skill drill!)
There you have
it. That’s a pretty full quiver of
skills. You’ll be practicing these
for a good while. They are practical,
and very useful. Master them, and
you are much less likely to get into trouble, and much more likely to be able
to get out of it.
Next week: Next Week: Practice Practice Practice!!
~//~
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.
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