Bikes and how they are ridden

[Dave Kirk]

Good Morning and happy Father's day to all.

I have a semi-rhetorical thought/question. When we talk about bike riding we most often talk about the bikes themselves and not how to properly use and ride them. It seems as if there is an implied idea that a good bike will make a good rider. At the same time we all (I hope) intellectually understand that the bike doesn't make the rider. Yet we seem to focus on the bike at the exclusion of the rider.

I'm sure there must be a good number of reasons for this. First off, gear is fun and there is the tempting thought that the right fit and enough bar drop will make us the next LeMond. It's too easy to look at the bike as being the limiting factor when in most cases it's just not so. We've all been on the group ride or race where some old guy with a beat to shit crooked Colnago with 36 spoke wheels crushes all comers with their carbon stems and ti spindled pedals. So we KNOW that it's not the bike but for the most part we talk about the bike.

I suppose it's easy to talk about the bike as opposed to the rider as it's pretty clear cut. A bike is light or it isn't. A bike has a steep seat angle or it doesn't..........clean. So that said how do we talk about how to ride the bike instead of the bike? Or do "we" even want that? I suspect some might not as it will ruin the "next LeMond" fantasy.

A few weeks ago I took a high performance driving and autocross school. We all drove our our cars and had an instructor with us most every moment of the day. In the 8 hours I took part in this not once did any of the instructors talk about the car. It was all about how to use the car. Timing, intensity, duration, looking ahead, picking of lines, etc. was the focus. I learned a lot. I wish the bike thing was more pragmatic like this.

There is a lot of shit given to folks that have their bars at the same elevation as their saddles and with short top tubes and long seat tubes and a handful of spacers. The whole fred look deal. It seems to me that many of the bikes that look like this are a result of the fact that the rider hasn't been shown how to properly use a bike. If they had then the position they ended up with might not make as much sense and they would evolve into a position that is more "traditional". Certainly some folks need non-Raul Alcala positions to be comfortable and that is just the way it is. But I suspect many would benefit from a lower, longer position IF they had the riding skills that rewarded that. A chicken and egg deal of sorts.

So how does one use the internet and it's forums to help in this way? It's certainly not by ridiculing the guy with the high bars. I think that has proven over time to be less than effective. At best it gives the guy a bike that looks right but isn't ridden right.

Am I alone in feeling this way? Am I over thinking this?

dave

[justinf]

Happy Fathers Day Dave. I think this is right on.

[Len J]

Dave:

As usual, you are spot on.

I was thinking about this very thing yesterday on my ride. Not sure if this will move the ball down the field, but here is what came to me.

Riding a bike is, on it's face, a very simple thing. Once you learn balance, you can ride any bike (pretty much). On the other hand, there are very subtle (and not so subtle) skills that need to be learned to really maximize the capabilities of not just the machine but also the riders muscles. Unfortunately, these skills are not always apparent to someone that has never experienced them.

A personal story may help.....When I was about 22 or so, after 6 or so years of riding, mostly by myself, hacking around, I thought I was a pretty good rider. I was 22 YO, strong as hell, 6 ft 135 lbs with a cardio system that allowed me to run a 2:26 marathon at 17 YO. I could ride many into the ground....I was pretty cocky. A guy moves down the street from me and asks if he can ride with me. It took me about 10 minutes on the bike riding with him to realize that he rode a bike a lot different from me. I was brute force....he was.....elegant. I rode "on the bike", he rode "with the bike". With me there was the rider and the bike...with him it was one entity. He was fluid, effortless.....I was stunned. I made a comment along the lines of "Damn, I wish I had the talent to ride like you" He laughed & said, You can...it just takes work. & I never forgot the rest.........

"The way I ride is a skill, it's a habit that I worked very hard to develop and I work very hard to preserve. I train 3 things when I'm riding.....My Cardio, My strength and my position/pedal stroke/handling.....I actively concentrate on each of them in different workouts......they are a conscious effort to do things "right""

He then worked with me to make the unconscious...conscious. He taught me the skill. I have been riding for 35+ years and I still can't ride like he rode....but I do work on getting better.

I think that most have never been taught the skill.......some that have heard it, don't understand it ......some that understand it, aren't willing to work at it. Others don't think it's important...and still others want to buy it. If you plotted a bell curve of riders along a line from able to balance on the bike on one end to "elegant" on the other, I think you'd see why there are more racing bikes set up the way they are.

Riding a racing bike, even one set up like you describe, is still a rush....where else can you go so fast with such little relative effort? It's an attractive proposition.

Hope some of this makes sense.

Len

[SteveP]

i like the comments, dave. good first post. i asshatted you to be the first.

i have a 10cm stem on my time and 3cm spacers.
i look at many of the pros riding the bikes and i see 2cm spacers usually... w/ a 12 or 13...
thats them, i'm me... my drop has been the same fr years...
the aesthetic depends a lot on the fundamental frame design and its adaptation to the rider...

barring of course custom ... which is easy to do if that route appeals and it should.
if it were custom it'd be a little different but that the way i ride it.

this set up allows me free use of the drops and my favorite position which is hands on the end of the (shimano ) levers w/ a finger curled around the exiting cables. i can ride 4+ hrs and nothing hurts but my legs, the way i like it.

[72gmc]

Thank you for your post, Dave. It brings up a question I have been meaning to ask Too Tall and the others: what are your skill drills? I happen to be the kind of person who likes to practice individual skills within a whole sport, ever since I was a kid dribbling a soccer ball around cones. It might make be better; it definitely makes it more fun for me. Especially in the winter, when I take out the single speed for trying/failing/falling sessions just to get out of the house.

[Too Tall]

Dave we should sticky this thread, it's a winner. You know the expression "horses for courses" natch? Same for riders and their bikes.

Teaching folks how to ride and train is passion. Great stuff happens when you can ride with someone and work directly with them....your point regards how can we refine and improve riders via the internet is something I'm interested in too. Let's keep this thread.

72GMC Oh my gosh there are so many good drills. Here is one and possibly the best skill lesson anyone can do with folks who are like minded. Ride bar to bar with a friend. There are so many things you will learn doing this such as pacing, mutual riding, how to look for road defects that will affect other riders, holding a smooth pace / line, casual contact (not all contact is negative and most unintentional minor contact can be returned gracefully so there is no problem) geez what else? Ahhh the best lesson, how to ride with someone and not against them ;)

As for laughing at other people's bikes. It's going to happen so let's cross that bridge later. Saying we won't laugh just defeats the purpose of an open discussion....chu know? Trust me, whoever points a finger will have to back it up.

Thanks for starting this thread boss.

[Fixed]

the main thing to me is that everybody that can should be riding a bike ..some will learn what works for them some will never care
imho
cheers

[Cary Ford]

Great thread.

Best fundamental "skills drills" that taught me how to ride a bike:

Riding a fixed gear over open roads.
Riding a track bike on the track in a group.
Riding in a groups on the road.
Riding a mountain bike.
Racing a bike.

Oh, and crashing at speed has helped, too.

But fixed gear riding on the road more than anything else (and I did this for a year when I was 15 years old) FORCED me to learn how to RELAX - how to pedal with the bike, not at the bike - and put muscle memory into my body that, almost 30 years later, I still call upon every time I ride.

[swoop]

DK, you rock for writing this. I think that because anyone can ride a bike, the assumption is that staying up is all that's involved. There's a fundamental blindness to seeing the fact that riding is a skill that one develops throughout their life. And that this skill takes endless renewal and commitment in order to develop.

All along I've been hammering folks online to wake them to the idea that to begin to start to see riding as a process of chasing mastery.. that their riding itself will fundamentally change for the better.

For some reason this thought evokes a lot of hostility (and a ton of reactionary knee jerk celebration of disconnectedness and lack of skill)... which leaves me bewildered. To be a cyclist takes work... its just not easy, but that's what's beautiful about it.

Cycling is a skill that everyone can develop... and everyone that spends any amount of time riding should develop. The first step is understanding that very concept... it takes years to become a skilled cyclist.
this seems germane:
http://www.belgiumkneewarmers.com/2008/06/brethren.html
(and yes it is).

And it starts as simply as how you sit on the thing. A favorite simple drill is to go ride and keep both wheels on the white line the whole time. It shows you how a stiff upper body and looking down at your front wheel makes it impossible to keep a steady line.

[Archibald]

Yep, it's an easy trap for the rider to use the bike as a shortcut for solving a number of fit issues, but like everything else about cycling, it's rarely about the bike.

[swoop]

also, talking about a oddly designed bike is talking about an object. if a person gets hurt by the way their bike is being talked about.. its sad for them. its a bike, its not your mother.

i hate to say it but some folks could man-up a little and just deal. its just a bike. its an object. its a thing.

[WadePatton]

When I grow up I wanna be just like Dave. Great post and spot on.

parts are parts that is simple. optimizing those parts and ones ability with them--gets complicated fast, and entails work. complicated work puts many peeps off.

I'm digging and learning and talking to anyone I can (can afford) trying to nail down my position, and attempting to distill that into an ability to help others with theirs. It would be simpler if everyone agreed--and they do in gross generalities, but hair-splitting specifics vary by source. And I understand that, but I'm still standing in mud.

Then there's the training. ;D

[Sandy]

A set of twins- One buys a $6,000 bike. One buys a $3,000 bike and spends $3,000 on lessons on how to ride it. A race is about to start between the twins. Who do you bet on??

Local bicycle Club A- Just come to the rides. Local bicycle Club B- In order to ride on club rides, you must first take club classes on safe riding and group riding techniques. Next week is a club ride with both groups at the same ride level. Which ride will you ride on?

Problem is that most of us learn many years after the fact that we really don't know too much about how to really ride a bike, and what it takes to do so. Would have been great if there had been prerequisite classes prior to purchasing a bike, or at least ongoing classes supported and held by local bike shops and local clubs to teach us how to ride safely, effectively, and efficiently.


Sandy

[tai rui]

Long before I started spending all my time and money on these two-wheeled demons, I was a pretty goodbirdwatcher. Top 5 in my state for species, reasonable place in the national rankings, I pretty good at it and getting better. Limited only by the time I had to spend in the field.

One summer I went down into the southwestern corner of my state and I had a pretty solid encounter with a Buff-breasted Flycatcher. It's a Mexican summer migrant that you see on occasion in certain spots in AZ but nowhere else. Unbeknownst to me, one had not been seen in my state for more than 30 years.

So I reported it to the hotline and wrote up a field report which I submitted to the state committee. I started getting all these phone calls from the local heavyweights, "you sure?" "where was it?", "you sure?".

When the quarterly committee report came out I found that my report had been dismissed. "Viewer lacks sufficient experience with the species for this to be accepted." I went through the roof and wrote individual letters to all the members expressing my disbelief. My feelings were hurt. To a man, they got nastier and nastier and nastier, turning all my questions back on me. It also didn't help that a couple of the "cool kids" saw the species the following spring not 2 km from where I had seen mine.

That was then end of me reporting unusual species to the state committee.

A few months later I saw one of the guys in the field and he sheepishly said hello and we finally got around to that incident. I told him that in my estimation the state reports committee should assume the role of educators in order to build a stronger body of observers in the state. He looked at me dumbfounded and he said the real reason my report had been denied was because it was poorly detailed. Well, I knew I was a poor report writer and if they had taken 10 minutes to explain its inadequacy, they would have had a different result. They would have had a better observer, with good motivation that would continue to send them reports.

It's one thing to know what the heck you're talking about, it's another to be able to teach it. I think discussions like the "fredly bike shop disaster" prove this in spades. Lots of smart, talented people around here, but not many with the sense of a teacher in helping others to overcome their mistakes. If anyone is wondering why their attempts at help are met with hostility - take a look at the delivery. I promise you that's it.

[JimD]

Re: Developing skills:
In my experience, though I hate riding trainers and rollers, riding rollers has been a very tangible way to develop smoothness.

-JimD

[Catulle]

You make many good points in your post. The fact is that I know many people, even athletes in other sports, that are afraid to ride one of my bicycles. Just the thought of clipping their feet to the pedals freaks them out. What I find most distressing about the odd looking bicycles is that there are so many of them which are expensive brand new bicycles. That is, the owner of such bicycle paid a bundle for a bogus fit to a dealer who in turn planned the monster with the manufacturer. In this case no one wins, except for the $$$ that dealer and manufacturer pocket. The bicycle is a piece of crap and the buyer non the wiser. And I must point out, I see too many Serotta bicycles that fit this category.

[doofus]

what cary said

commuting on a fixed is a great cheap skill developer...smooth out the stroke, work on the balance, hop curbs, do trackstands, all that crap...ends up making a lot of stuff easier....

[GrantM]

Lots of smart, talented people around here, but not many with the sense of a teacher in helping others to overcome their mistakes. If anyone is wondering why their attempts at help are met with hostility - take a look at the delivery. I promise you that's it.

Some of us spend all week teaching and helping. That's why they come here to blow off a little
steam and have some fun. Too Tall gets paid to teach people to ride, I don't think the purpose
of the Doof's post about Freds was intended to 'teach' a lesson to anyone.

[Too Tall]

This is POTW :) I'll leave this as a sticky for a week at least.
Yo tai rui, if you were to spend that much energy on wicked wicked bicycles I know we won't disagree ;) Peace.

[swoop]

i miss the days from when if you rode poorly on the ride... wordin and or thurlow would eviscerate you. it was a great way to learn and it was before the great pussification of grown men and the presumption of skill that most folks have when they just show up.

look what kirk did, he actively prusues skill by going to driving workshops. that's all you have to do.. self activate.
....

separately,
sandy.. if your asking for a nudge.. i'd just say go out and ride 45 minutes a day every day no matter how much you want to or don't want to ride. force yourself. focus on the sensation of the riding.
on two or three of those days time your ride so you meet the local club at the finish of their ride and have coffee with em. do this six days a week religiously and without missing no matter what. think of it as a devotional practice.