Establishing Safety
Ask yourself: What makes you feel as safe as you want to feel on the bike? Which of those things are within your control, or at least your influence? Here are some possibilities:
- Bike Fit and Finish. Plain and simple, if your body feels as solid as possible on your bike, you'll feel safer. If you haven't already, consider getting a fit from a well-trained and highly-regarded professional. And make sure you know how to assess the state of your bike before you ride. A quick once-over can catch a piece of glass in a not-yet-blown tire, an out-of-true and thus wobbly wheel, a worn-out brake pad, or a cracked spoke nipple. Knowing your bike is solid is yet another source of safety.
- Physical Skills. Increasing your confidence in your riding—cornering, descending, riding in a pack, conducting yourself in a sprint -- can help you feel safer. Getting a coach, participating in skills clinics, finding a mentor in your local club or group ride, and reading about cycling skills are all ways to improve. And of course, getting out there and riding. But as you work to improve your physical skills, challenging yourself may bring on some anxiety. For some of you, the "I'll just jump off the high dive anyway" types, going for it completely is the best way to get through the fear. For others, a progressive, stair-step approach to the challenges is the best way to go.
- Mental Skills. Sometimes these are not too separable from your physical skills on the bike. For example, when you decide you need to look behind you while riding, how do you judge when, how, and how long to look back? How is your decision affected by your speed, the road quality, the straightness or curvature of the road, and whether there are riders in front of or behind you? When you take one hand off the bars to eat or drink, is the other hand close to the stem for stability? When you talk to other riders in a group, do you look at them? How do you take blind corners? What steps, if any, do you take to keep yourself safe when you're passing other riders? How do you assess who's safe to ride with? All of these things are about your judgment on the bike; feeling solid in your choices is a source of safety.
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Also, your skills in building and sustaining your self-confidence, managing anxiety, handling pressure, and responding to adversity on the bike all can help you feel safer as well.
Finally, recovery—after, and sometimes during, rides and races—is critically important to your safety on the bike. Fatigue, and of course exhaustion, can decrease your ability to attend, focus, judge, decide, and act. Champion triathlete and coach Sage Rountree, in her new book, "The Athlete's Guide to Recovery," writes,
"Your successful approach to recovery will depend on two traits: patience and faith. You need patience so that you can give your body the time it needs to heal itself. Your body is an amazing, complicated, and powerful system, and given time, it will adapt in incredible ways to the stresses you put on it. But you have to give it time. Faith is also critical. You need to trust that time off, even though it might be hard to take, will have a direct, positive effect on your training. In time, you'll see that it does, and your faith will become tested and proven belief."
