Welcome ladies!

This is all shades of awesome, great work Nhatt and ladies.
I'm sure lots of great stuff will come out of this. :)

good to see the ladies unite, will be all good

pops head round door

Hi Nhatt :-)

Hello I want to introduce myself, I've posted few bits on ladies forum before, but I thought it would be appropriate to say hello in welcome thread. My name is Nikola, I'm currently bikeless as my babe got stolen few days ago :( but i'm waiting for pay day to get a nice single speed. I joined lfgss to get more knowledge about bikes and maybe network too. I am way too shy to join the rides generally organized by blokes so I'm happy to see that girls are getting together too. I hope I can make it to some of the upcoming rides soon! x

Hi Nikola - welcome! Sorry to hear about your bike, that sucks bucket loads. Great reason to be able to get a shiny new (even if it is s/h, like mine was) one though :)

Excuse my intrusion, but I met a lady on my cycle into Farringdon this evening, and she was riding fixed. I spoke to her on our brief cycle to Elephant together, and she'd never heard of Lfgss. So I pointed her this way.

Her commute is pretty impressive - Beckenham Junction to Lambeth......fixed. She apologised for having brakes on her bike. Eh?! Is this how its seen, that if riding fixed, one should be macho with it and eshew brakes......and maybe common sense.

If that very nice lady turns up here, I think she'd be a great asset. She rides a SE Premium Ale '09 model. I think its a size 49cm.

More women on the forum. Win. Win. Win.

Awesome stuff Nhatt and Claire ... just wish I had time to post more these days, goddam new job!!

Anyway, I was introduced to the forum by the other half, by means of a few trips to Wests ... and having probably not ridden more than 20 miles in as many years, I was duly handed over to the safe pair of hands that were Clefty, Jayloo, Stix and miss_socks for the Attack of the 50 fixed women June 09. I was on a vintage BSA ladies racer, 5 speed, practically made of scaffolding it was so heavy. But it was a beautiful mint green ;p. I was buzzing more than a bee in a happy place when I got home having managed to do the whole ride from Buck House to Richmond Park without walking!

I now have three bikes (see ladies bikes thread). Over the past 2 months I have begun commuting from Ealing to Knightsbridge, absolutely loving it despite a bump here and patella tendonitis there. I would seriously recommend cycle training, no matter what level you are - I have had a couple of sessions, see the general cycle training thread.

I have learnt so much from this forum, and met some really great people, I'm looking forward to more!

nice one.

inspirational cyclist

Beryl Burton totally rocks. My grandad read her autobiography every Christmas (he was a keen amateur competetive cyclist) and apparantly one my first sentences was "Beryl Buron" hee hee hee.
My parents now live, coincidentally, in her home town of Moreley where there is the wondrous "Beryl Burton Memorial Garden" - paving stones and a couple of moth eaten shrubs.
She beat the blokes! And worked in the rhubarb fields. Awesome.

Hey there folks, thought I'd say hello too

I came on this forum recently for the first time, looking for a frame for my first ss build, and then got hooked on bike anti-porn. I've just been lurking really, and but the new ladies forum has made me brave enough to post :) Great advice on the forum, and cool to see some female bike mechanics too!

I have several bikes in various stages of assembly - seems I may be addicted to converting crappy old Peugeots but hopefully I'll get over it.

I've only been cycling a couple of years, and just in London, but I'd love to do one of the rides - the Brighton one sounded like a laugh.

Might ride over to south drinks next week too...

Cheers, Sarah

Welcome :-)

Clefty, would it be the same as this BMX on the right? This is me, as a 7 year old growing up in Hong Kong (on the right) before I graduated to something larger!

Nice to see this forum, will be dipping in. I'm in Brixton, commuting to Charing Cross on a dutchie, which is a tank of a bike but stopped for a while. My oral historian lecturer and neighbour wanted me to go on a 116km night ride with her and is doing a mechanics course which prompted me to have a look on here again.

I may get up the guts and go and do it if there are ladies rides being organised!

Gloria x

what is the consensus on the success of the ladies forum so far?

@blackspring, that's an awesome BMX! Mine had yellow pads if I remember rightly - I need to find a picture of it, can only find a pic of me on the Raleigh Budgie which was my first steed.
If you're in Brixton, come to South beers on a monday its just down the road from you - lots of ladies here usually frequent it

what is the consensus on the success of the ladies forum so far?

i like it :)

it definitely made me want to stick around after my bike was recovered :D

@Clefty

Rocking. I used to live right next to Coach and Horses before I knew about this. Yes, I'm colour coded to my bike in that pic.

I still can't believe you live next to the C&H and not know of the 241 burgers deal...

I'll have to get down there next week. Medium rare!

I wish I had been given a BMX as a kid.

I was MTB city.

My little sister (12 years old) is taking her first velodrome lesson on monday!

I miss out on all the cool stuff.

I wasn't allowed a BMX as a kid. Instead I had the much more sensible Raleigh Grifter - still had great fun with it, although I could never manage the tricks that the cool kids with BMXs did!

Just found an action shot of me on my Grifter when I was 11 or 12 ...

Ha! I love old photos!
My first proper bike ...

And my first Fixed Wheel!

You look exactly the same... ;-)

My oral historian lecturer and neighbour wanted me to go on a 116km night ride with her

The distance you give makes it sound suspiciously as if it's a 116 mile night ride:

http://www.lfgss.com/thread36412.html

Is that the one?

what is the consensus on the success of the ladies forum so far?

I LOVE it. I'm still reading and participating everywhere else but it is great to have a focus full of ladies-specific information.

I'm not sure if I introduced myself properly anywhere else. I've got on my MTB for the first time in about 4-5 years and have made myself a target of cycling the C2C sometime next year. It might be a pipe dream, as I don't know if i am physically up to it, but it is a goal that I can work towards. I've had a "major trauma" or two and in February I could just about cycle around the local park without falling off. This week I managed 7.2 miles (with loads of stops). Exhausting and shattering and I am still soooooo unfit. But I am getting there....

Oh and my MTB has something like 21 gears but i'll be buggered if i don't just stick to one.

in reality, you don't need all 21 gears, sometime just the one is plenty.

the best thing you can do is to try and stick to one chainring on the front and just change the rear gear instead.

I find people overcompensating themselves by selecting a stupidly spinny gear to start off with and then change gear every second until they're at a reasonable speed to get home on time.

singlespeed is a lovely notion forcing you to not worry about the gearing and just concentrate on riding your bike, what you describe doesn't sound like you're unfit, just that you're not used to riding a bike for a prolong number of miles yet, the more you do it, the easiest it become once your body adapt to riding a bike.

thanks for all the advice... both here and elsewhere... believe me i AM unfit...