I started a 7-week cycling training last week and embarassingly rode my racing bike for the first time last Sunday-- training day 1.
This is what absolutely not to do, as I showed up for practice with no air in my back tire and needed a tutorial in how to change racing bike gears, since there are a lot of them and you have to figure out which gear shift to use (mainly, should I try going up or down with my right hand or left hand?)
I did, at least, cycle to Longchamp, the paved road which is a big loop around a racetrack where every single cyclist in Paris trains on weekends. So got used to the new bike on the way over, although no gear changes were required...
Longchamp was simultanously a lovely and an irritating place, which is kind of how I feel about Paris itself. No traffic lights and the road is closed to motorists and it's in the woods, which was nice. But it was also extremely crowded. It was manageable from 9-11 am but after 11, it got a little dicey-- as in the insane traffic chaos that you regularly see at Place de l'étoile around the Arc de Triomphe because everyone and their mother and their Tour de France-winning tri team goes there. This is why our training sessions will always end at 11!
While I'm ok with changing gears now and even riding in semi pre-11 am chaos, bike maintenance is still a bit of a mystery to me, to be honest. A mystery that involves an awful lot of mini screwdriver things and other miniature lightweight gadgets. But bike riding is FUN. And it's fast, too!
We worked on riding safely in a group, in a specific formation called a 'peloton.' This really just means either in a single file line or pairs and you get pretty close to the other cyclists, so the goal was to practice and become confortable with 'getting on a wheel' (that just means getting close to the back tire of the cyclist in front of you). The person or people up front work harder (30 percent more, apparently) because they have more wind resistance. The rest of us have it easier because we're just mooching in their airstream and so everyone takes turns being the leader. Riding in someone else's airstream is called drafting, so check a big triathlon term off the list of 'what does this mean and will I ever learn to do it?' In some triathlons drafting is legal, but in some it isn't, so you have to check the rules each time. It did feel windier up front when I took my turn leading the group.
I tried to think of other examples of drafting before our ride to try to figure out what to expect: cars can ride in the airstream of big trucks on the highway, for example-- I've had friends who tried this to give their old clunkers a break, not that it probably prolonged the life of their old cars in any way. Canadian geese also do this by flying in a 'v' shape (to be honest, my main point of reference for airstreams, pelotons and drafting in general was Canadian geese, since I find the Tour de France too boring to watch on TV-- I really thought we'd be in a giant 'v' formation like how geese fly!)
Here's a video of a few seconds of our training in a peloton (and it is very much unlike Canadian geese migratory patterns, I might add!) Thanks to some expert coaching (big thank you to the tri team for organising these beginner sessions!), this is what a peloton should look like :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6l-LMrpdGY&feature=youtube_gdata_player
After the Cinderella hour of 11 am, the end of our session practicing the art of peloton riding, we gave our bikes and our legs a rest to practice the equally important art of relaxing at a café!
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