People like to travel: that is why the grass is greener over the fence. We are walkers --- our natural means of travel is to put one foot in front of the other. The bicycle seduces our basic nature by making walking exciting. It lets us take 10-foot strides at 160 paces a minute. That's 20 miles an hour, instead of 4 or 5... It is not only how fast you go --- cars are faster and jet planes faster still. But jet-plane travel is frustrating boredom --- at least the car gives the pictorial illusion of travel. Cycling does it all --- you have the complete satisfaction of arriving because your mind has chosen the path and steered you over it; your eyes have seen it; your muscles have felt it; your breathing, circulatory and digestive systems have all done their natural functions better than ever, and every part of your being knows you have traveled and arrived.

John Forester, Effective Cycling, Chapter 22

Spinning Up: An Introduction to Cycling

Piaw Na (piaw@www.midwinter.com)

Cycling is a wonderful sport. But most people who buy bicycles do not end up being cyclists. Their bicycles end up sitting in a corner in the garage, gathering dust. This article is an attempt to help you avoid being one of those by providing enough knowledge to be able to comfortably acquire a suitable bicycle, unlearn old bad habits, and start riding safely and with confidence.

All of what I say here (and then some) can be found in the books mentioned in the references at the end of this article.

You are assumed to be an adult who've learnt to ride as a child, knows how to drive an automobile, and in good health. As with any other sport, consult a doctor before embarking on a trainig program if you've not been active all your life.

Disclaimer: the author is not responsible for any injuries or monetary losses due to following or misunderstanding the advice given hereon.

Step 1: Determining your goals

What do you want to do? Do you plan to race? Do you plan to ride highly technical trails? Do you plan to make overnight trips eventually? Unfortunately, when starting a new sport, it is often difficult to make up one's mind, so often people start with a befuddled idea of what the sport means to them.

Do not enter the sport thinking that you will necessarily get fit, however. Running is a cheaper and less time-consuming way of getting fit. Cycling consumes a significant amount of your time, and certain kinds of riding (mountain biking, or leisurely riding at bike path speeds) do nothing for your fitness.

Step 2: What kind of bicycle?

For all novices except those determined to ride highly technical single-track trails (trails with lots of loose rocks, wet tree roots, and other such obstacles), I recommend a road bike. The road bike is characterized by a smooth unsprung saddle, dropped handlebars that look like hooks, and 27 inch wheels (really known as 700c wheels) with relatively skinny tires. This is because for riding any distance, a road bike is faster, more responsive, feels better, and more comfortable. If you are skeptical of the sturdiness of a road bike, consider this: I've ridden many a road bike off-road, frequently going faster than a mountain bike would. I've heard of a person who descends the rocky trails of Mt. Tam, the birthplace of mountain biking, on a road bike with skinny tires at 40mph. How a bicycle performs has more to do with the skill and strength of its rider than its construction. Any bicycle that can stand up to your pedalling is more than tough enough to withstand whatever road shock you may put on it.

Not all road bikes are constructed the same. Some are made for racing. The characteristics of such bicycles is a general tightness and high sensitivity of feel, with no braze-ons for attaching fenders or racks, and little tire clearance. Others are made for sport-touring, with slightly better tire clearance, perhaps a triple-chainwheel, a place for racks or fenders but usually not both (though you can force it by sharing eyelets), and a generally higher positioned handlebar. The last kind of road bike is the touring bike, with clearance for wide tires, cantilever brakes (the same as you might find on a mountain bike), braze-ons and fittings for racks and fenders, and a generally less responsive feel. Touring bikes always come with a triple chainwheel.

A sport-tourer is a good, practical first bike, but if you are heavy and plan to go on multi-day rides, a touring bike is recommended. Bridgestone bicycles used to make a good hybrid that made a good touring bike.

Mountain bikes and Hybrids share similar characteristics, and there the choices seem to be between minimalist or techno-oriented suspension bikes. There's not much I can say about these, except that if you are considering a mountain bike, your budget will determine what you can afford and what you would want to buy more than anything else.

The most common mistake a cyclist makes is to underbuy. Many cyclists buy a mountain bike thinking that a mountain bike should be usable for most riding, and they don't care much about speed on the roads anyway. Within a few months, they realize that they don't do much off-pavement riding and should have bought a road bike in the first place.

Step 3: Shopping for a Bike Shop

A beginner should shop for a bike shop and then buy a bike from them. This is critical. A good bike shop will provide support, advice, repair services for long after you have bought your bike from them, and I would glady pay $100 more for that level of support, advice, and service. Unfortunately, most novices starting out are unaware of such differences, and shop by price rather than for service and knowledge. I'll try to give you enough knowledge to be able to distinguish between a good shop and a poor one.

The first sign of a good shop is its variety. Good shops do not sell only mountain bikes, and even if you were buying a mountain bike, I would not steer you towards a shop that sold only mountain bikes. A good shop has a good selection of different bicycles and equipment, as well as a variety of employees. They would have tourists, racers, and mountain bikers on their staff (maybe some employees do all three). When told that you're shopping for a bicycle, a good shop will ask you what you plan to do with it, and then proceed to look for a bicycle that fits you.

Is a good fit important? Most experienced cyclists will not ride a bicycle that's off by more than a centimeter or two from what they have determined to be their proper fit. First of all, it's not what they're used to, and a bicycle that's off feels funny or different. But more subtly, and more importantly, an ill-fitting bike is a recipe for injury. Most knee injuries incurred during cycling, for instance, are due to a seat that is set too low. For rides longer than about 5 or 10 miles, any pain that's not muscle soreness or fatigue is due to an ill-fitting bike, and continued riding will cause injury. Back pain frequently occurs for a cyclist whose reach from the saddle to the handlebars is either too long or too short. When riding your bicycle, remind yourself that road racing cyclists or long distance cyclists ride up to 200 miles a day (as much as 16 hours) on their bicycles with no pain, and any pain you feel outside of muscle fatigue should be diagnosed and corrected as soon as possible.

The way different shops attempt to fit you is critical to determining how good a shop is. A really good shop has employees very aware of fit, and who understand how to find a bicycle that is right for you. Many consider buying a bicycle to be something like buying a car. You consider the performance, the price, and then just buy it, trying to get as good a price as you can get for it. Buying a bicycle is more like buying clothes. If you have trouble buying clothes because of certain physical characteristics, you will have trouble acquiring a bicycle because of those same characteristics.

It is during the fitting where physical differences between men and women and different races show up frequently. Women often have longer legs than men of similar heights, with most of the extra leg length showing up in the thigh bones. Women also tend to have longer wider thighbones (for child-bearing capacities), and thus often need to have handlebars set higher. The various races often have different characteristics for leg length in proportion to the rest of the body. Also, in general, the taller the person, the more leg they have in proportion to the rest of their body. Note that these are all generalizations that cannot easily be applied to an individual, which is why a good bike shop is necessary. Some shops use what they call a "fit-kit", which is a process in which the shop measures 13 different parts of your body, feeds the measurements to a computer, and generates a "fitting-sheet" that is theoretically the right one for you. Unfortunately, if you are not a typical Caucasian male (which is how the computer is generally calibrated), you will find that the fit can be quite useless. That is why I often do not trust bike shops that rely on the fit-kit. It's a scientific-looking process that ignores many of the realities of a bike fit, which makes it more of a marketing tool than a practical device.

Here's how a shop employee should try to fit you. You will first be asked to straddle the bicycle. Then you will be asked to grasp the bicycle by the stem and seat, and lift it until it contacts your crotch. The distance between the wheel and the floor is your crotch-clearance. Most cyclists recommend a crotch-clearance between 1 and 3 inches for road bikes, 2 to 5 inches for mountain bikes, with hybrids in between. This number is not fixed, and is determined by your physical characteristics. Persons with longer legs in proportion to their torsos will have more crotch clearance, and persons with longer torsos in proportion to the rest of their body will have less. In fact, very good bike shops know when to break the rules regarding crotch clearance, and will take care to explain to you why they are breaking the rules and what physical characteristics you have that put you outside the rule of thumb.

After a bicycle with sufficient crotch clearance is found, you will be asked to mount the saddle. Depending on the strength of the employee, you might be asked to support yourself with your hand. In truth, it doesn't take much strength to support someone balanced on a bicycle, so you can trust the employee if you are not asked to support yourself. You will then be asked to pedal the bicycle backwards. The purpose of this exercise is to determine the proper seat height for you. What the shop employee is looking for the position of the seat where your knee bends just so slightly when the pedal is furthest away from you. Different experts have varying opinions about what the optimal position is. Greg Lemond recommends 88.3% of your inseam, and others recommend less. The general consensus seems to be between 85 and 92 percent of your inseam is what the distance from the seat to the pedal in the lowest position should be. If you are new to cycling, this seat height will feel too high for you. We'll get to how to cope with that later.

Now that the seat height has been determined, you will be asked to place your hands on the handlebars. Here, look for a bend in your elbows when you are relaxed. Most people do this with tense, bunched up shoulders and locked elbows. Try to consciously relax and let your elbows and forearms move to their natural position. A good bike shop will now be able to tell you whether the stem is too long or too short for you, or if it is just right. It rarely is, and a good rule of thumb is that when you are relaxed on the seat with your hands on the brake hoods, you should not be able to see the front axle of the bicycle, which should be blocked by the handlebars. As with all rules-of-thumb, there are exceptions to this rule. The best shops will do a stem change, if one is necessary, for free before selling you the bicycle.

All through this, ask about the fitting process, because there is still more that needs to be done --- seat fore-aft position needs to be set, and for cleated pedal systems, a separate, more involved fitting needs to be done as well.

Now that a decent fit has been found, it's time to take a test-ride on your prospective bicycle.

Step 4: The Test Ride

If you are a novice, the bike shop would have set the seat height higher than you are accustomed to. Most adults who have learned to cycle as a child start by putting one foot on the pedal, and then pushing against the ground frantically with the other foot to get into motion before taking off. There is an easier way than this: put one foot into the pedal, and backpedal to where that pedal is in the 2 o'clock position. Then push down hard on that pedal, which will drive you forward and at the same time lift your bottom up to where the seat has been set. You may now sit down, put your foot on the other pedal, and start spinning.

The general misconception about riding a bicycle is that one sits on the seat, pushes down on the pedals, steers with her hands, and bends her back while riding. The truth is, a cyclist straddles the saddle, leans forward without bending her back keeping it straight, steers by balance, and twirls the pedals.

So you ride, try turning the bike one way, then another. Does it feel sluggish? Does it feel twitchy? If you can, try riding with no hands to see how it feels. Then stop pedaling to feel how smoothly it rolls. Try a few sprints to see how good the bike feels under heavy load. Unfortunately, that's about as much as you can do on a parking lot. It is sadly inadequate, but one could say the same about test-drives of cars.

To stop, take one foot out of the pedals and stretch it towards the ground. As you brake, get off the saddle on the other foot (which is still in its pedal), and turn the handlebars away from the foot which is out of its pedal. You will now find yourself falling towards the out-stretched leg as you come to a stop.

Step 5: Buying A Bike

Negotiating with a bike shop should be done carefully. First of all, you'll have a relationship with the shop for a long time after you've bought a bicycle from them, so don't push too hard on the price. If the stem needs to be changed, it should be changed for free by the shop. In general, it is better to negotiate for parts like water-bottle cages, or discount on a rack, and other merchandise than to negotiate for price. If you want or need a triple-chainring crank and your chosen steed doesn't have one, now is the time to do it, rather than later, when it will be more expensive. Trade-up on tires, deraileurs, handlebars, and other easy-to-do parts are negotiated very easily. Trade-up on wheels, rims, and other high labor parts are harder. Most shops will give you a 10% discount on merchandise bought from them after you've bought a bike from them. Most will also give you a free tune-up 30 days after you've got the bike. Some will give you a general discount on various services like overhauls for the life-time of the bike.

Some unscrupulous shops will try to sell you on the basis of magic high-tech material like carbon-fibre, titanium, or aluminum. All materials used in bike construction are similar, so don't sweat it. I'm conservative, so I stick with steel, but that's got more to do with the fact that the bikes I like happen to be steel more than whether I like steel more than other materials.

Step 6: Riding

You've now come to the end of the article, but really the start of your journey as a cyclist.

I don't have time or space to deal with most cycling techniques. Just remember to spin your pedals (for novices, this means being one gear lower than what you're really comfortable with), and ride your bicycle like you're driving an automobile. Ride with traffic, look behind and signal before you change lanes, and ride one car-doors width away from parked cars. Join a cycling club (or read the books referred to below) to learn more about cycling, to get friends who ride, and most of all, enjoy riding.

Welcome aboard!

References

Effective Cycling, 6th Edition, John Forester, MIT Press 1993. ISBN 0-262-56070-4.

The ultimate guide for a cyclist of any experience level, from novices to experienced riders. Mainteneance, Riding in Traffic, Commuting, Touring, Racing, Bicycle Advocacy, even Cycling in the Media. It's all here in this fat book. It is easily the best $20 you can spend on cycling.

Training for Cycling, Davis Phinney and Connie Carpenter, with Adrian Nye.

A sport oriented approach to cycling, but with a light touch. It is fun to read, with lots of memoirs and stories that reek of nostalgia. The section on fitting is one of the best I've seen in any book, and the sections on descending a mountain, training, and motivation are very very good. Even if you never want to race, this is a good book to have. Connie Carpenter devotes some space to women's issues in cycling, so this is a good place to get first-hand information from an expert.

Bridgestone Catalogs, Bridgestone Bicycle U.S.A., 1992-1994

These are wonderful catalogs, full of information on bicycles, how they are made, with an attitude that's refreshingly non-hype. These are now increasingly rare, now that Bridgestone has gone out of business, but you can still get them if you ask the right people.