Experiences of Cycle Training

I just completed 2 hours or so with David Showell, the boss of Cycle Confident. The kind folk at Westminster paid for it all, since I work there. I've been on the roads for 25 years but seem to have an actual scrape or worse every year or couple of years, and get cut up enough to make my blood boil every couple of days, so I was just looking to reduce the frequency of these mishaps.

He started off with a quick check of my bike - slack chain! - asked if I was happy with my brakes, and offered to adjust them if I wasn't confident enough to do it myself, which I thought was kind. I learned something pretty quickly which was to get on the bike in the road, and starting from the kerb side of the bike. I never did this before, since it's a little harder than getting on from the off side, due to it being lower on the kerb side, but he made the point that if something goes wrong it's much easier to jump to safety when you don't have a bike in the way.

A quick check of my ability to look behind me, and we were off, following my homeward bound commute. Right away he noticed I weave about a lot and don't look behind me, which was certainly true. My line was quite good, but for the first mile or so, the recurring theme was, "Be more aware of who's behind you." After I dropped him at a couple of lights and he saw me power-weave up through the Soho traffic, he got to the nub of my problem. "You're a nutter," he said, "I've never seen anyone ride so fast and so aggressively through traffic as you".

Despite the way it reads in print, he was totally non-judgemental about it, and pointed out a few points from the previous mile where I'd abruptly changed course while 'making progress' and could have been taken out by someone who didn't know where I was going next. He made the point that if you're moving very fast, there is less opportunity for another road user to see you and judge your intent. I never thought about this, but it seems obvious now that if someone is only glancing in their rear view mirror, side mirrors or over a shoulder, then the faster you go, the less likely you are to be in their field of view in the instant of the glance.

A little later on in the journey (to Halfords, to exploit the BOGOF computer mishap and land some tasty shorts) a bendy bus conveniently cut me up and, had I not jumped on the brakes, would have pushed me on to the pavement, which would have been disastrous at those speeds. David showed how I could have avoided this situation, had I spotted the bus stop ahead and been aware of the bus behind me. The rest of the lesson was focused on not going at breakneck speed everywhere, and communicating manoeuvring intent through eye contact, hand signal and road position. I'd always thought that if you have to signal, your road position wasn't clear enough, but he laid out several situations where position isn't enough and encouraged really assertive hand signals to help drivers back off a bit and give you a bit more room.

As a trainer, I thought David was really good. He had a hard task having to be the angel on my shoulder, on the matter of speed. While he was making the point that by going at breakneck speed I might make a few more minutes, the devil was whispering, "But you'll WIN!" Win what? I guess is the question, but I've always seen just about any journey as a competition between me and the rest of the road, chasing down any cyclist who happened to pass me while I was day dreaming, and generally acting like a 17 year old boy racer in his first XR2i. David was really helpful in both identifying this attitude and suggesting, for the first time, that going as fast as possible isn't the best way to ride in traffic. I'd definitely recommend a lesson of this kind to anyone. Like I said, even with a quarter century of road cycling behind me, there was plenty to learn.