I'm stressed in my cycling :-(

[buggi]

Cheers for the encouragement @buggi will volounteer to assist in the meantime and practice more.
Shame I like to ride my singlespeed, in heavy traffic it just does not cut it at my level of fitness ... might lose a stone or so to compensate

when i passed i bought an MTB to bring me to the same level as the student. Slower than my road bike, flat pedals etc. I use that for level 1 & 2 training. I tend to use my cross or road bike for level 3 as those students tend to be faster

I'd like to politely disagree with buggi. Why should Pat, or anyone else, be expected to be able to sprint at 20 mph in order to "not hold up traffic"? I will ride my bike as and where I want, at a speed I am capable of doing, and the traffic can wait until I consider it safe to let it past. What is more important, my safety or 20 seconds of someone else's time? (Note that I am not advocating holding up traffic indefinitely, or for no good reason, but this expectation that cyclists have to be fit and fast to ride on the roads is one of the things that puts people like Pat's "Belles" off cycling. And of course if we had better infrastructure then people wouldn't have to deal with traffic so much anyway).

You are of course, correct, i don't think i really thought about how i was writing what i was meaning to say. What is actually important is not speed, but confidence. When you are confident you are less likely to be hesitant in setting off from junctions, and thus do not unnecesarily hold up traffic. That's what i was trying to get at, not meaning to tell @Pat "5mph" to be a speed queen, i just didn't word it well. Perhaps i have worded that a little better now, as I think this is what her instructor trainers were trying to put across.

 

[fimm]

@buggi that I do agree with.

 

[Poacher]

how odd. I blame being on a near dead mobile.

....................but I've survived 30 years mainly urban riding on nothing more than a cycling proficiency course when I was 9 in rural Cambridgeshire.

Well done on the course Pat, but ride and trust to your instinct as to what's right for you, take the training as a guide to assist your development and enjoyment rather than a mantra to follow rigidly.

And there was me thinking it was a clever name-based joke, as in:

"I'm sure my riding isn't textbook but I




shouldbeinbed"

 

[Boris Bajic]

Stressed in my cycling, I am .... by a Bikability course!

... back on the bike tomorrow

Congratulations (belatedly) on getting into this and getting it done.

I've had no training since Cycling Proficiency as a school boy (and even then it was by my mother, who taught these things, so not really 'real').

Since then, I've been taught only to drive a car. I was later taught some other ways to drive inconspicuously and deftly, but I was pretty poor at that and never used it. I had some rigid-body HGV training, but it was shallow and farcicle (and overseas).

My cycling is therefore informed as much by my driving as anything else. I ride a lot, but I often see myself as a visitor on the terrain of the motor vehicle. I ride with verve (less so as I get older) in cities, but occasionally I am quite rattled by fast vehicles on sweeping NSL single-carriageway roads out where I live.

Your training might even persuade me to get some 'proper' guidance about current techniques on how to stay safe on these streets bristling with superfluities of naughtiness. Congratulations again on the way you have carpayed the deeyem.

 

[Pat "5mph"]

On my ride home around 5.30, city centre, fast traffic, lots of side exits and pinch point, I was having to keep an eye on a gent riding on my left, looking a bit bewildered and (would you believe it!) slower than me in spite of being on a road bike. I was firmly in primary (used to do that on that stretch even before the training), he caught up with me at a set of traffic lights.
" I come from the country" he said "not used to this city traffic" ... then he turned into the busiest street, near central station.
Poor him, hope he got home ok!

 

[Kbrook]

I work as a national standards instructor, in an area near you. We spend all our time trying to get the kids to raise their saddles as they are usually too low. We don't take non riders on the course, as we just don't have the time to teach them to ride, so all our year 5 and 6 kids must be able to ride, and by the end of level1 prove they can signal etc before they go out on level 2. I assumed all areas where the same but it appears not.

Incidentally I worked Monday but had to call Tuesday off because of rain, it was horrendous and would have been madness to continue.

I think that was the issue; they assumed all the year 5 children taking part didn't ride.

But he turned up on a road bike (the rest on all sorts), with his teacher knowing he'd just done a 26-mile charity ride the previous weekend and that he was taking part in performance bike training

Ah well, hopefully they'll listen to him next time.