Cycling

Almost everybody can already ride a bicycle. That makes cycling unusual among the subjects here: the barrier is not the skill, it is knowing which version of the activity you want and what it actually requires.

The disciplines have diverged enough that they are close to separate sports sharing a machine. Road cycling is about sustained effort over distance on tarmac. Mountain biking is a technical skill sport where the descending is the point. Gravel sits between them and has grown fast because it removes the traffic. Commuting is transport that happens to be exercise. Touring is travel. Track is a velodrome sport with fixed gears and no brakes. They share pedalling and very little else.

What is genuinely common across all of them is worth stating, because it is where beginners lose most: fit, gearing and maintenance. A bike that fits is comfortable for hours and one that does not is unpleasant within twenty minutes. Gearing determines whether hills are possible. And a clean, adjusted drivetrain is the difference between a bike that feels good and one that feels like hard work — most people who say they find cycling exhausting are riding an unmaintained bike with under-inflated tyres.

Decide first

Which discipline you are actually inMost bad beginner advice is correct advice for a different kind of riding.

Biggest free improvement

Correct tyre pressureMore riders are slowed by soft tyres than by fitness.

Best value bike

A well-maintained second-hand one

Legally required after dark

Lights, fitted and litTwo separate duties in the regulations. The detailed specification is in Schedule 1, which is where to check.

1. 1

   Step 1: Get the bike to fit before you buy anything else

   Saddle height is the big one: with the pedal at its lowest point and your heel on it, your leg should be almost straight, which leaves a slight bend when the ball of your foot is in the riding position. Almost every new rider rides with the saddle far too low, which is uncomfortable, inefficient and hard on the knees. Then check reach — you should not be stretching or feel cramped.

   You will know it worked when: Riding stops hurting, and hills get noticeably easier.

2. 2

   Step 2: Inflate the tyres properly, and keep doing it

   Tyres lose pressure continuously and a soft tyre is dramatically slower and much more likely to puncture. The pressure range is printed on the sidewall. Within that range, heavier riders and smoother surfaces want more; lighter riders and rough ground want less. Check weekly — this is the single most neglected thing in cycling.

   You will know it worked when: The bike feels like a different machine.

3. 3

   Step 3: Learn to fix a puncture before you need to

   At home, in daylight, with the wheel off the bike. It takes fifteen minutes to learn and it is the difference between a mechanical being an inconvenience and being the end of the ride. Carry a spare tube, two tyre levers and a pump on every ride.

   You will know it worked when: You can ride further from home with confidence.

4. 4

   Step 4: Ride the route you would actually use

   A commute at a quiet time, or a local loop. This tells you far more about whether you will keep cycling than a scenic ride does, and it lets you find the bits of road you would rather avoid before you meet them in the rain at eight in the morning.

   You will know it worked when: A realistic sense of the activity rather than the best-case version.

5. 5

   Step 5: Sort out lights and a lock properly

   Lights are legally required in the dark and cheap ones are adequate for being seen. A lock should cost 10–15% of the bike’s value, and how you lock matters as much as what you lock with — frame and wheel to something immovable.

   You will know it worked when: You can ride year-round and still have a bike.

6. 6

   Step 6: Use the gears more than feels natural

   New riders tend to grind a heavy gear slowly. Spinning a lighter gear at 70–90 revolutions a minute is easier on the knees and more sustainable, and it feels wrong for about two weeks. Change down before the hill, not on it.

   You will know it worked when: Hills become manageable rather than an event.

7. 7

   Step 7: Find a group, if that appeals

   Club rides, social rides and organised routes are how most people find riding partners and routes. Most clubs run a genuinely slow group and mean it, and cycling is more social than its reputation suggests.

   You will know it worked when: Routes you would not have found and a reason to go out.

Gearing is the part of cycling most often explained badly, and understanding it removes a lot of unnecessary suffering on hills.

A bicycle gear is a ratio between how fast you turn the pedals and how fast the wheel turns. Bigger chainring at the front or smaller sprocket at the back means a harder gear: more distance per pedal stroke, more force needed. Smaller front or bigger rear means an easier gear.

Cadence is how fast you pedal, in revolutions per minute. Most experienced riders sit somewhere around 80–90rpm on the flat, and new riders naturally choose something much slower — grinding a heavy gear at 50rpm, which feels productive and loads the knees considerably. Spinning a lighter gear feels inefficient and is not: it shifts the effort from your joints to your cardiovascular system, which recovers much better.

The practical rule that follows: change down before the hill, not on it. Shifting under heavy load is hard on the chain, sometimes impossible, and by the time you need the gear you have often lost the momentum to get it.

The other skills that matter more than fitness:

• Braking — The front brake does most of the stopping. Use both, progressively, and brake before the corner rather than in it. Wet rim brakes need a much longer distance and a light initial squeeze to wipe the rim.
• Cornering — Look through the corner at where you want to go, not at the thing you are avoiding. Inside pedal up, weight on the outside pedal, and lean the bike rather than steering it.
• Riding in traffic — Position yourself where you can be seen — well out from the kerb and the door zone. Signal clearly and early, hold a predictable line, and make eye contact at junctions. Riding in the gutter invites close passes.
• Riding in a group — Hold your line, do not brake suddenly, point out hazards, and never overlap the wheel in front. Group riding has strong conventions and they exist because the consequences of ignoring them land on other people.
• Descending — Hands low and covering the brakes, weight back slightly, look far ahead. Confidence comes from technique rather than nerve, and it comes gradually.

1. 1

   Step 1: Ride regularly, close to home

   Short rides, often. Consistency builds the contact-point conditioning that makes longer rides pleasant.

   You will know it worked when: A bike you use rather than store.

2. 2

   Step 2: Learn basic maintenance

   Punctures, chain cleaning, brake pads, gear indexing. Removes the dependence on a shop for everything.

   You will know it worked when: Confidence to ride further from home.

3. 3

   Step 3: Ride further than feels comfortable

   A 40km ride, then a 60km. Distance comes surprisingly quickly and is more about pacing and eating than fitness.

   You will know it worked when: A real sense of range.

4. 4

   Step 4: Join a group ride

   Different skills entirely — holding a wheel, riding predictably, sharing the work at the front.

   You will know it worked when: Faster riding and better routes.

5. 5

   Step 5: Pick a discipline and commit

   Sportives and audax, trail centres, gravel events, or racing. Each has its own progression and its own equipment.

   You will know it worked when: Focused improvement instead of general riding.

6. 6

   Step 6: A big objective

   A century, an audax, a multi-day tour, a race licence. Cycling has an unusually rich set of these and they structure a year well.

   You will know it worked when: Something to train for.

What matters, in the order it starts to matter:

• A bike that fits — Frame size first, then saddle height and reach. A cheap bike that fits beats an expensive one that does not, every time. Bike shops will size you free of charge and it is worth the trip.
• Tyres — The cheapest meaningful upgrade on any bike. Good tyres are faster, grippier and far more puncture-resistant, and they cost £30–£60 each. Wider tyres at lower pressure are more comfortable and, on real road surfaces, no slower — which reverses decades of received wisdom and is now the mainstream view.
• Lights — Legally required in the dark — see the safety section for what the regulations actually say, which is more precise than the usual summary. In practice: be-seen lights are enough in lit streets, unlit lanes need a proper beam, and a daytime rear light is one of the cheapest useful things you can add.
• A helmet — Not a legal requirement in the UK for adults, and most riders wear one. If you do, it should sit level, two fingers above the eyebrows, with the straps forming a V under the ear and the buckle snug. A helmet perched on the back of the head does very little.
• A lock — Sold Secure ratings are the useful shorthand. Budget 10–15% of the bike’s value and lock the frame and a wheel to something that cannot be lifted or cut.
• Puncture kit and pump — A spare tube, two levers, a mini pump or CO2. A track pump at home is far better than a mini pump for weekly pressure checks.
• Clothing, in order of usefulness — Padded shorts make the largest difference to comfort of anything you can wear, and are worth having long before anything else. Then gloves, then a windproof layer, then waterproofs. Cycling-specific clothing is genuinely better at this than general outdoor clothing, because it is cut for a forward-leaning position.
• Mudguards — Transformative for commuting and winter riding, mildly unfashionable in road cycling, and the difference between arriving damp and arriving filthy.
• Clipless pedals — Shoes that clip into the pedal. They improve control and efficiency modestly and everybody falls over at least once at low speed while learning. Worth it eventually; not a beginner priority.

If you do not know which you are, start with a hybrid or a second-hand gravel bike and ride for three months. Both will do a version of almost everything, badly enough to tell you what you want and well enough to enjoy. Committing £2,000 to a road bike before discovering you dislike riding in traffic is a common and expensive way in.

Riding a bike has no rules in the sporting sense until you enter something. What governs an ordinary ride is road traffic law and the Highway Code; what governs a race is the rulebook of whichever body sanctions it. The two are frequently confused in advice given to beginners.

• The Highway Code — Applies to cyclists as road users and was substantially revised in 2022 to introduce a hierarchy of responsibility, guidance on riding in the centre of a lane in specific circumstances, and recommended minimum passing distances for drivers. Some of its rules are legal requirements and some are advisory, and the Code distinguishes them by wording — "must" and "must not" indicate a legal requirement with the underlying legislation cited.
• Where you may ride — Roads and cycle tracks, and bridleways where cyclists give way to walkers and horse riders. Not footpaths, and not pavements. Access rights differ in Scotland, which has a broad statutory right of responsible access.
• Racing on the road — Sanctioned by British Cycling or, for time trials, by Cycling Time Trials, each with its own regulations covering licences, categories, machine checks and conduct. Massed-start road racing in Britain requires a licence and a category; time trials traditionally do not.
• Sportives and audax — Neither is a race and both say so. A sportive is timed and organised; an audax is ridden to a time window with controls to prove you followed the route. Audax has its own conventions and a strong anti-competitive culture.
• Track and off-road competition — Velodrome racing, cyclo-cross, downhill and cross-country all have separate regulations and separate licensing, and all are governed domestically by British Cycling under UCI rules.
• Shared-path convention — Not law, and it prevents most conflict: slow down, make yourself heard early, pass wide, and thank people. On bridleways, horses need the most warning and the most space.

A bicycle is a machine that mostly wants cleaning and lubricating, and neglect is expensive: a chain left dirty wears the cassette and chainrings, turning a £25 replacement into a £120 one.

In order of how often it matters:

• Check tyre pressure weekly — The highest-value two minutes in cycling. Tyres lose pressure through the tube walls whether you ride or not.
• Keep the chain clean and lightly lubricated — Wipe it, apply lube to each roller, then wipe off the excess — the lubricant belongs inside the roller, and anything left on the outside collects grit and grinds the drivetrain. A dry chain squeaks; an over-lubricated one is black and gritty. Both are wrong.
• Use wet lube in winter, dry lube in summer — Wet lube survives rain and attracts dirt; dry lube stays cleaner and washes off. Winter road riding destroys drivetrains faster than anything else in cycling.
• Check brake pads — Rim pads have wear lines; disc pads need replacing when the friction material is down to about 1mm. Both are cheap and both are the wrong thing to discover on a descent.
• Check the chain for wear — A chain checker costs £10. Replacing a chain at 0.5% wear costs £25; leaving it until 1% means replacing the cassette too.
• Check bolts occasionally — Stem, seatpost, bottle cages. A torque wrench matters on carbon components, where overtightening cracks parts.
• Get a full service annually — Bearings, cables, wheel trueing. Around £60–£100, and it catches the things that are hard to see.

The rest, honestly weighted:

• Junctions are where collisions happen — Not open road. Position yourself to be seen, assume you have not been, and make eye contact before committing.
• The door zone — Riding within a car door’s width of parked cars is the single most avoidable risk in urban cycling. Ride wide of it, even where that feels assertive.
• Be visible in daylight too — A daytime running light on the rear is one of the cheapest things you can do, and low winter sun is a genuine hazard for drivers approaching from behind.
• Off-road, tell someone — Mountain biking and gravel riding happen where phone signal is patchy and passers-by are rare. A route and a return time.
• Helmets — Not compulsory in the UK for adults. The evidence on population-level benefit is genuinely contested and we are not going to summarise a literature we have not assessed. What is uncontroversial is that a helmet only works if it is worn correctly — level, snug, and not pushed back off the forehead.

Cycling has strong and largely unwritten etiquette, most of which comes from group riding where one person’s carelessness lands on somebody else. Point out potholes, call out hazards, hold your line, and do not brake sharply in a bunch. On climbs, the group waits at the top.

The sport also carries a reputation for gatekeeping about equipment and clothing that is much less true in practice than online. Most clubs are visibly delighted when new people turn up, run genuinely slow groups, and lend tools. The internet argument about whether your socks are the right length is not something you will meet at a village hall on a Sunday morning.

On shared paths and bridleways, cyclists are the ones who need to give way and slow down: walkers and horses have priority, a bell or a spoken word beats a silent pass, and horses in particular need a slow, audible approach. This is the single biggest source of friction between cycling and other countryside users, and almost all of it is avoidable.