Hi, from Kent

[Hatevessel]

I'll try again! Just to prove it wasn't anything too dodgy, haha

 

[Leaway2]

Looks good to me. You just need to get it off that small ring now .

 

[Pat "5mph"]

Hi and welcome to cycle chat!
Bike looks good

 

[Hatevessel]

So I went out for a few miles last night. Not much, but I'm ramping it up. Hoping to develop a 'training route'. I stuck to flat roads or very slight inclines. Most importantly, I was able to complete without stopping, which feels like progress. Fairly slow going at times, but the lovely flat bit of road round the back of Rochester Prison allowed me to pick up some good speed (I felt alive!!)

Some observations:

I'm not an anatomist so bear with me: the pad of my hand (the spongy bit below my thumb) started to ache on both hands, fairly quickly. Will this pass? Or is there an element of bike setup that is wrong?

Padded shorts are amazing

Think my gears need some attention - it was struggling to find a gear when I ramped the big ring up to the top setting (3) from (2) when in a high gear on the other gear setting. Just attempting to write that shows how little I know! Bike shop told me to bring it in if I notice the gears getting choppy, so I will do that asap.

They say you never forget how to ride a bike... true, but only to an extent. I felt a little uneasy at times and a little wobbly. I guess this will just take some time, so I'm not too concerned. But I'm certainly not as cocksure as I was when I was a kid.

I need to push through the muscle aches as I back off at the first sign of feeling fatigued. More of a mental thing than anything else.

I'm going to look into using an app or something to track my progress - Strava will probably be my choice.

 

[w00hoo_kent]

The hand thing could be poor bike fit, if you're putting a lot of weight through your wrists, it could just be a weight thing and will get better as you get lighter. It can be helped with better grips or padded gloves. There's a nerve down the middle of the palm that gets squashed which is a big cause of it. Getting some blood back in to it and changing your hand position around (on a hybrid easier with bar ends) can help. Ergo grips and bar ends helped when my wife was riding flat bars, she is putting a lot of weight through her wrists.

Gears, could be 'bedding in' especially with cheaper components. There are screws and things that adjusting helps matters. The bike shop is a good idea as they've offered but if you want to get in to it yourself it's easy enough to find how on youtube although a workshop stand makes life a lot easier (if you haven't realised, spending more money on cycling is a doddle!)

I found bicycles just scarily thin when I first started riding them again because I was used to motorbikes, plus at 22 stone it felt like balancing bowling ball on a kebab skewer. It soon passes. With two wheels, the faster you are going the more stable it feels (up to a point).

Work up the muscles over time, pushing on is a good thing, damaging stuff so you have to stop for a while is a bad thing. It'll come sooner than you think providing you keep cycling. Get in to the habit of stretching at the end of the ride, it's one I wish I'd cultivated.

I use a mix of Map My Ride and Strava. Both have their positives and negatives. If you have a smart phone then there are plenty of free Apps and it should have plenty of battery to record a short ride. You can do it for nothing if you keep reasonable records (both will allow you to map the route you are taking and you can put in a start and finish time which will give you an idea of whether you are getting quicker) but something that logs the ride (higher end bike computer or Garmin of some kind) makes life easier and gives better data. That's pretty much the thing with cycling, you pick your point on the line between hassle and expenditure :-)

I spent over a year just logging distance from a basic bike computer in to an online log and using that to compare things. Now I upload from my Garmin Touring + which is a lot easier, but I needed to convince myself I wanted to spend the money. Knowing you're serious about it helps that :-) .

 

[Hatevessel]

So I've been beavering away, and noticing marginal improvements, although mainly my confidence in the saddle is making great progress. I'm afraid I bottled my (relatively) big planned ride yesterday due to the weather, but will be getting out tonight, rain or shine.

I'm thinking I'm going to migrate my incremental progress over to the beginners forum rather than have this thread all to myself, but just wanted to say thanks for your invaluable input w00hoo, and thanks once again for all the welcomes