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feature
Cycling survival — 13 beginner mistakes to avoid
We were all beginners once and we all made mistakes. In the hope of helping new riders avoid the biggest errors, here's a baker's dozen blunders that you should steer clear of.
Wrong saddle height
If your saddle’s too low you’ll be uncomfortable and less efficient. If it’s too high, you risk tendon and joint injury, and rocking from side to side to pedal will chafe. There are a number of ways to determine saddle height, but the most useful rule of thumb is that your knee should be 25-35° from straight when the pedal is at the bottom of the stroke.
>>Read more: How to set your saddle height
Not using the gears
We often see newbies grinding along in their bike’s highest gear, and walking up the gentlest slopes. More rarely, a rider will have legs spinning furiously as they potter along at 5mph because the bike’s in low gear and, apparently, staying there.
You’d think people would be used to gears, but with sometimes four levers to operate, a bike’s gears are that much more complicated than a car’s, and it’s far from obvious what all those levers do.
Beginners flummoxed by gears should do two things: ask, and play.
Ask your bike shop how to use the gears. Get them to show you which are the easiest gears that will get you up hills, which are the fast gears for speed on the flat and downhill, and how to shift into them.
Play with the gears. Go somewhere quiet, like back streets or a car park when the supermarket’s closed and ride around, changing gear. Change between the chainrings, using the shift levers on the left hand side of the bar and feel how it’s harder to pedal in the big ring, easier in the small. Click between the rear gears, using the right hand levers. You’ll notice that the differences are smaller than with the front, which allows you to fine-tune the gear you’re using.
>> Read more: Beginner's guide to understanding gears
Buying a bike with too-high gears
The popularity of ‘compact’ chainsets, with smaller gears than those used by racers, means this is less of a problem than it used to be, but it bears mentioning anyway. Some road bikes come with high gear ranges because they are specifically intended for racing. Unless you live in the Fens, or are intending to race, you want a bike with lower gears so you can more easily ride up hills.
The tell-tale feature to avoid is a chainset with 53 and 39-tooth chainrings. Instead, go for a compact, with 50- and 34-tooth chainrings.
Take a look at the rear sprockets too. A sprocket set with a range from 11 to 23 teeth is for racing or flat country. Look for a largest sprocket with 28, 30 or 32 teeth which will give you a low bottom gear so you can spin more easily up hills.
Not using the 30-day service/check
Most shops offer a free service 30 days after you buy the bike. This gives the shop a chance to make sure the gears and brakes are working properly after the cables have had a chance to bed in, and to check the wheels are true.
A surprising number of people don’t take their bikes in for this free check, though. That’s a shame because as well as the useful mechanical check, it’s a great chance to chat with your bike shop folks and get answers to any cycling questions that might be bugging you.
Neglecting your bike shop
Yes, you can get amazing prices for bike stuff on line, but for a beginner it’s really worth cultivating a relationship your a good bike shop. As well as offering knowledgeable technical advice, a bike shop is often the centre of a cycling community, whether it’s dedicated to club riding, triathlon, racing or mountain biking. Finding the right bike shop for you, and spending money there, is a great way to tap into the local scene and advance your riding.
Wearing the wrong clothes
You don’t have to dress like a member of Team Sky to ride a bike (even to deliver lunch) but certain clothes really don’t work well for more than popping to the shops.
Jeans, for example, have seams in all the wrong places, and being cotton will get very cold, heavy and clingy if it rains.
Similarly that classic wardrobe staple the cotton t-shirt is fine for gently pootling around on a summer’s day, but a very bad idea if the weather’s cold. I once had to treat a cycling companion for mild exposure because she had got very cold thanks to a cotton T under a waterproof jacket absorbing sweat and keeping it there.
Read more: Beginner's guide to cycling clothing — do you really need all that Lycra?
Wearing undies under shorts
Underwear with cycling shorts is a bad combination, and not just because you’ll have a terrible VPL. The point of cycling shorts is that the Lycra shell moves with your body as you pedal and the pad sits against your skin to protect you from chafing. Underwear of any sort interferes with that, adding seams and bunching in places where you really don’t want them.
Just go commando under your Lycra and if you’re too modest for that, take a look at mountain bike shorts that have a loose-fitting outer shell over a snug inner with a pad.
Attacking hills
It’s a classic rookie error: the road goes upward and you attack it with gusto, only to turn the second corner and find a) there’s a lot more hill than you expected and b) your legs and lungs are already screaming. You’ve depleted your reserves, put yourself into oxygen debt and your body’s saying “Basta! Enough!” If you’re lucky, you’ll have a gear low enough to let you recover; if not, may find yourself roadside, having a little rest.
The trick to hills is pacing. Sure, once you’re supremely fit you can go flying up them, but even Chris Froome has to meter out his effort so that his supreme physiological engine gets him to the summit without faltering.
For beginners, the first step in learning to pace yourself is to start in a low gear, perhaps even your lowest. Spin easily, breathing steadily and find a rhythm you feel you could sustain all day. When you’re sure you’re completely comfortable, then it’s time to click up a gear and pick up the pace. A heart rate monitor can be a very useful tool for measuring your level of effort.
Read more: Buyer’s guide to heart rate monitors
Eating wrongly
Cycling needs fuel and your body doesn’t have a limitless store of it. After riding for a couple of hours or so you will have used up the glycogen in your muscles and liver. That can lead to the dreaded ‘bonk’, where you get light-headed and wobbly and have to stop for food.
Best not let things get to that stage, by eating little and often while you ride. How you take on fuel is up to you. There’s a whole sport nutrition industry ready to sell you energy gels, drinks and bars, or you can eat Actual FoodTM, as provided by cafes on the way, or dried fruit, sandwiches and like that.
But it’s just as important not to overdo it. A big meal straight before a ride can leave you feeling nauseous when you put in any effort, or just make you sluggish. The combination of cooling down and a full belly after a mid-ride meal can produce ‘post lunch syndrome’, where you just feel you can’t get going again. If you like a big lunch, don’t stop for it immediately before a big hill.
Over-reaching
Exhausted cyclist (CC BY-SA Dennis van Zuijlekom|Flickr)
If you’re fit from another sport it’s tempting to throw yourself in at the cycling deep end, bashing out mega miles. But fitness is activity-specific and even if your heart and lungs are in good shape from, say, running, your pedalling muscles won’t be.
Getting straight into pounding out big distances means you risk over-use injuries and fatigue, so build up gradually. With a little patience you’ll soon be knocking out centuries.
Forgetting spares
You don’t need much to get yourself out of mechanical trouble on the road, but without the bare minimum you’re walking if some things go wrong. The absolute essentials are a couple of spare tubes, a pump and tyre levers, all of which will get you out of the most common problem, a flat tyre. Add a multi-tool and you’ll be able to tighten most things that might come loose as you ride.
Not using sun cream
Even if it’s cloudy there can be plenty of ultra-violet getting through to damage your skin. With the breeze on your skin you won’t feel yourself burning until it’s far too late, and it’s easy to be out on the bike for long enough to get very badly burned.
The answer is sun cream with a Sun Protection Factor of at least 30, and preferably 50. Apply it liberally 20 minutes before a ride to give it time to key to your skin and top it up ever couple of hours as sweat can wash it off. Make sure you get plenty on areas that are more exposed than usual, like the back of your neck, the tops of your knees and so on.
>>Read more: Cycling survival — how to avoid sunburn & stay comfortable
Thinking it’ll be easy on the front because it’s easy in the bunch
If you’ve just joined a club or started riding with a group you have a lot to learn about positioning and moving in a line of riders. One of the most common mistakes is thinking that taking a turn on the front will be easy because you’re not having to work very hard.
Thing is, the draft from the riders in front gives you a big advantage. You do up to 40% less work than the rider out front, depending on the conditions. You can be cheerfully pootling along while the rider up front is going flat out.
Nobody is going to think ill of a newbie who doesn’t take long, hard turns on the front, so don’t bury yourself trying to do your ‘share’ before you’re fit enough to comfortably finish a 100km club run.
Another common bunch-riding error is to hang around at the back of the group trying to stay out of the way of more experienced riders. The problem with this is that anything that stretches the group out has a far greater effect on the riders at the back than those near the front; you can waste a lot of energy getting back in contact every time. Far better to ride near the front, in second or third wheel, where you can more easily respond if the pace picks up — and ask for mercy if it picks up too much!
Made or encountered any other rookie errors? Tell us about them in the comments.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
Latest Comments
- HarrogateSpa 25 sec ago
Yes it is poor. Very selective concern about loss of grass.
- EK Spinner 5 min 10 sec ago
The key is in your text, allowing them to overtake when it is safe to do so, it was not possible to execute a safe overtake here
- Dnnnnnn 12 min 20 sec ago
I'm going to show my bike a picture of this shed and tell it, "If you don't behave..."
- Hirsute 1 hour ago
Ex black cab https://twitter.com/KingArtAT/status/1783296299787309088
- bensynnock 1 hour 55 min ago
Quite. I was wondering where the cycling infrastructure is located that causes drivers to go 90 on the M3?
- I love my bike 2 hours 25 min ago
If one is prepared to pay £28 for a TPU tube, the butyl comparison should be Continental's Supersonic ~50g or Schwalbe at 70g. Both costing £8 - ...
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68 comments
definately bend elbows a little - outwards to look like Chris Froome, twist you arms and bend elbows slightly downwards if you want to look a little tidier (and begin working towards being naturally more aero).
I'd estimate at least a fifth of commuters I see on my ride to work are permanently stuck in the smallest cog at the front and the smallest at the rear. Clearly they clicked the levers when they got the bike, with the spring taking it easily to the smaller sprockets, and then they never pushed the lever the 'hard' way to move it back up the block. So they're typically riding in 34 x 12, chain fully crossed. I see them straining as we set off a the lights, straining up hills, both men and women, all ages. Usually riding cheapish bikes.
It makes me wonder whether anyone in the bike shop ever actually explained the gears to them. or why they sold them a bike with gears rather than a single speed. Not the best argument for their LBS.
The cheaper groupsets that most commuters are on don't help. It can be pretty tough to get it on the big ring. Some may even think it's broken.
Missus had this problem with her Sora. Had to show her to really force the lever in, hold it at the sweet spot, to get it to shift.
Then I had to moan at her for months to make her actually shift up and down on the front.
Now she does it naturally and even chooses which ring to use depending on how she feels - like if she wants a big of a workout etc.
New riders do need a bit of help. Learning curve is shorter with a riding partner.
Get a bike fit, preferably not from a shop but somebody who also knows about body mechanics and doesn't try to fit you into predefined measurements, everybody is different.
You ain't kidding! Riding back to London, on a (solo) London-Brighton-London at age 17, the legs (and brain) suddenly stopped working, 20 miles from home. What the---! ah, this must be the dreaded BONK I'd heard the big lads speak of. Walked (lurched!) 50 yards to a sweet-shop---remember them?---wolfed a Mars Bar and I swear energy flooded back, via me young metabolism, within about a minute. Doesn't sound likely, but it's true, and there's one mistake I never made again. Well, not often anyway.
Doubtful, most (chain) bike shops are too busy selling commuters the wrong type of bike.
I don't think we'll see hub gears become common in the UK for average Joe, but I think 1x gearing could become the norm for most bikes within a few years.
"the most useful rule of thumb is that your knee should be 25-35° from straight when the pedal is at the bottom of the stroke"
Maybe I'm not very good at angles but that sounds like too bent a knee (although perhaps OK for complete beginners?). An earlier road.cc article had what I thought was a better rough guide:
"The general consensus on the level of leg extension, is that when your foot is on the pedal and the crank arm is in the six o'clock position the leg should be what is referred to as 'naturally cocked'. To feel what that looks and feels like, sit on the saddle and let your leg hang under its own weight. It will not naturally hang fully locked out (to its maximum length), but instead hold itself in a slightly cocked position. This is the ball park angle you should find the leg in, when the foot is on the pedal, with the crank arm in the six o'clock position."
Not to derrail (no pun intended) the thread, but part of this has to do with the huge big rings on many bikes. A 50 is a huge gear for sedentary novice, never mind a 52.
In any case, I agree with Unconstituted. Help out newbies, and remember that some things you take for granted aren't quite as simple. I lent a mountain biking friend my road bike, coming of a longish ride (metric century with a little dirt), just so he could test it out, and assumed he knew what's what. Maybe 10 miles later we crossed a short but punchy step-up into an overpass and he was wincing his way up. As we went down, he didn't keep up either, which was even stranger. I then realized he hadn't shifted out of the 13t sprocket I'd left the bike in. We switched bikes at the end of a downhill, and he had figured out how to shift down to the small ring but 71" was still to steep for him on the way up and a little small on the way down, as he didn't know how to use the STIs. I assume he didn't ask because he didn't want to be embarrassed, and it had been alright so far as we were going at a cafe pace. So be mindful of rookies, even fairly fit rookies how might be new to road cycling.
Riding out on a subtle tailwind feeling very pleased at how fit you have become, then you turn into the wind to come home.
My first proper bike had 52*42 and something like14-26 five speed. That was ok then, I now have a triple.
18. Before overtaking another rider, have a short rest to make sure that your breathing is calm as you glide past, not forgetting to tense everything in your core as you breeze past.
Then grimace as you go full gas to build a gap.
N.B. Make sure there is a left turn a few hundred yards ahead before attempting the above.
When overtaken by club riders, cheerily ask if you can tag on to the back for a bit of a draft, and lose 100m to them over the next 200m. Pretend you haven't seen them before when you puff into the next town where they are eating cake.
Unless you are a budding Froome, other people will be faster than you, and that is just fine.
There's a matching response:
"You should have said. The front's up that end - off you go and get warm. I'll let you know when I'm getting chilly". :oP
If you're a youngster joining a club ride for the first time, don't tear off the front up the hills and drop all those of a certain age. 40 miles later, it will come back and haunt you as you suddenly find yourself going backwards and realise that stamina is an important ingredient.
When someone pulls you over and fills you with water and jelly babies, remember the lesson and do the same for someone else in future years.
Yep. I used to believe in the LBS aaproach because it worked when I was a kid. So when a new LBS opened in town I went on down there keen to encourage them. As it happens I'd just got back from hols where my son had been tasked with putting my pedals back on after they were removed to make it easier to get all the bikes on the bike rack. He'd managed to line it up wrong then spanner it in and messed up the threads. So I actually needed a new chainset and thought I'd go 105 and very simple but different Shimano BB.
The price of the chainset was a lot more than online so asked about a discount. Nothing doing. I showed him the online price I didn't expect him to match it but perhaps make an effort. His response was to claim that half the stuff online was counterfeit and his was genuine. Ok I thought, well maybe he will throw fitting it in with the price and take the edge off. That's when he sucked hard on his teeth then gave me a load of old larup about facing the BB shell and special tooling and yadda yadda yadda. The upshot was a quote of £50 to fit. Total was just under £200.
So I went home bought the chainset and an external BB for under £100. Paid a tenner for a bb tool and fitted it all myself in less than half an hour.
I just couldn't get over what a poor businessman that guy was. He turned me from a would be willing and enthusiatic customer ready to pay that little extra for the LBS service and advice into a downright - hope he goes out of business and doesn't rip off too many cyclists before he does so kind of guy.
Yep..... had the same..... plus the usual "my gears seem not to be working properly"....then you as if they have fiddled with them....they usually say "My Dad took a look".... grrr... I usually and politely say "you tube"...the answer is usually "yes"........ I then advise to call me instead if there are any more troubles..... they always do and another customer is added.
I passed someone at the weekend. He seemed to be wearing brightly coloured swimming trunks underneath his unpadded lycra. No idea why.
Kinda hot, admit it
It makes perfect sense IF the local bike shop (or even the next to local one) is a good one. No-one should be expected to prop up businesses that aren't good enough but we'd all be worse off without good local bike shops.
And that includes some, though sadly perhaps not all, branches of Evans.
Though never, in my experience, Halfords
Sadly, in most cases it takes years of experience to realise how useless your average LBS is...
I have seen guys counting sprockets on my cassette because they didn't believe that 11sp groupsets existed when I asked for 11sp chain...
Twaddle. In the days before granny rings and compact chainsets, beginners managed just fine. I'm not saying compact chainsets are no good, just that a standard road chainset is not a thing for beginners "to avoid", nor is it a "common mistake" to start with one. I grew up on 53/39 in the hills and mountains around Scotland, and never suffered for lack of a compact inner chainring.
Getting hung up on Strava segment times.
Sure, track your improvements, but it's about the ride, not times or computers.
Resist the temptation to buy a Garmin. Bug ridden piece of crap.
Reading a cycling article and thinking that it's new.
Ahhhh!! Now I know what Mick Jagger was doing with that Mars bar.
assuming you need clipless pedals and specific shoes to ride a bike
LBS are not there to give the best offer on the market. But if you plan your Sunday ride on Saturday morning and find that somthing is broken or needs to be replaced this is when they come in handy!
Mine really does have a very broad amount of road bike spare parts on offer even it is not a specialized road bike shop. Therefore sometimes I even skip the online shop to support them, since I want them to stay
Most of that advice seems quite appropriate to experienced riders too.
It can be done as fast as you like as long as the offending item that caused the puncture is removed the from the tyre before the new innertube is inserted.
Nope. Blowouts happen when you're generally annoyed at life and forget to check that the innertube lies completely within the tyre beads before pumping it. If you're not enough of a boy scout to have packed an extra tyre (that's about 99% of us), then you're soon going to find yourself wistfully looking back at the time whe you were only dealing with having to change a tube in the rain. Oh, the good life.
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