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What I soon discovered however, was that even in small groups, the ability to pick up these skills differed so dramatically from one person to the next it was impractical to hold the classes in the manner I had envisioned. And yet, by the end of the programme, some would whiz past my originally envisioned Basic Skills curriculum and become full fledged knitters, while others would still struggle with holding their tools correctly. Now in my 9th year of riding a bicycle as an adult, I am only starting to approach the level of handling skills that most cyclists I know attain within their first 6 months of riding. The assumption there, is that what stands between a person having poor mastery of cycling skills and excellent mastery of cycling skills, are experience and practice.

But no matter how hard I try to think of an alternative, this phrase describes most accurately my experiences over the past year, including the abrupt pause in this blog's publication. We know that 'things' - private things - happen in life. And we also know that the worst things, the things that shake to the core and immobilise, have that effect precisely because they happen suddenly, without warning. And, if I do continue this blog, I hope that the new infusion of energy I feel from them will translate into my writing.

If you do the reaching for an apple bit, you will start to see how a bicycle can be set up in a variety of ways to achieve similar upper body extension in order to reach the handlebars. So why are bicycles today sized down and set up with lots of saddle to handlebar drop, whereas bicycles in the Olden Times (roughly pre-1990) were sized larger, with the handlebars and saddle nearly level? It also goes without saying that there is more to a bicyclist's position than reach alone, and the vintage vs modern setups - combined with a specific frame's geometry - will affect the overall balance and handling of the bike differently. To the eye of today's sporting cyclist, the modern setup simply looks cool - fast, sleek, aggressive.

Depending on the club, these can include anything from paceline training rides to brevet-style social jaunts, endurance rides, and 3-speed meet ups (see also: On Club Rides and Finding the Right One for You). It follows that we also tend to be overly optimistic about our average cycling speed - so that even when supplied with concrete evidence, such as cyclo-computer data, we might tend to cherry pick average speeds from our 'best' rides when deciding what speed we are capable of holding on a typical random day. After all, there is nothing quite like a few shattering club rides to turn one's aspirational average speed into their actual average speed! I recall the first time I joined a club ride in Ireland.