Let's Start With Fit

If you have a bicycle, maybe you have already had a ‘fit’—measurements of your body taken to be sure that the bicycle is set up for you. Or perhaps your bicycle came out of the attic and you aren’t sure whom the bike originally fit. Don’t fit yourself to the bike.
Best case scenario, we all get new bicycles and every one of us knows not to just accept the bike as it is put together from the box. For every little moving part and screw-tightened detail on this bicycle, there is a way to tweak it so that it fits better. Okay, maybe that is a slight exaggeration, but when the bike is fit correctly, by a knowledgeable bike-guy/bike-girl, a new rider avoids endless hours of soreness, loss of power, and aching joints and muscles.
Get your bicycle fit correctly—by a reputable professional!
Saddles, the term for those cute, little, sometimes torturous seats on which we plant our potentially vulnerable ‘SIT’ bones (and all our stuff), come in as many shapes and sizes as we do. Bike stores won’t come out and beg you to take up their time trying different saddles until you find the least harmful of the bunch, it’ll have to be your idea. Don’t be shy about asking. Bike stores know that it takes time to find the right match for you, and each saddle you try out that seems like a good match might feel totally incompatible the second hour you spend ‘aboard’. So most retailers give you a thirty day return policy. We all want to be nice and not take advantage, but in this case put your ‘butt’ first. Get it what it needs. It’ll pay off in the end! (pun intended ;)

Beth Travers
USA Cycling Coach

p.s. The big cushy saddles are NOT more comfy in the long run-- be a minimalist. You have to get used to being in a saddle (on, really) to be sure that you have picked one that fits your body.

Looking Down The Road

Nine months to go. It isn’t very long, really, when you are looking at the task of training your body to ride a bicycle 75 to 100 miles a day—each day—for a period of a couple of weeks.
There are issues; first, simply putting in the time—the actual hours—or saddle time as we call it. This done, your backside won’t become the biggest of your problems. Second, there is endurance. We are going to push our own weight plus the weight of the bicycle for hours at a time, up and down hills, through wind and weather. We will have to condition our legs, hips, and gluteus maximus to propel the bike along, and we have to condition our core muscles so that the long hours holding ourselves in position don’t exhaust us.
Speaking of exhaustion and endurance brings us to mental endurance. We have to condition our minds as well; we'll have to focus on our goals.
For every journey we take in life, there's a beginning. We know that if we don’t start, we don’t finish.
I am the great procrastinator, and maybe I’m not alone. But today, and each new today, we recommit, and we try not to put off training again until the week after we pedal into New York City.
Ready?

Its cool to start at the beginning. Ride around the block. If that's enough, stop. Tomorrow go around the block again. The next day go around your block and the next block over. Venture out on a greenway. We'll ride the eight hundred miles one mile at a time, so let’s train the same way.

We'll put together some training tips and post them one or two thoughts at a time. Feel free to ask questions and one of us will try our best to answer.

Beth Travers
USA Cycling Certified Coach