When I started road cycling 15 years ago, I thought I knew it all. After all, I knew I could ride a bike – how hard could it be? Some months after I took up the addictive pastime of road cycling, I realised I had much to learn. So, I thought it might be useful to share my list of top five bike skills you need to master if you want to be a proficient roadie.
On my list in no particular order are cornering, braking, ascending/climbing, descending, and using the gears. There are many other things that you also need to learn like bunch riding skills, bike maintenance, what to wear, and much more.
In my summary below I’ve included the most important thing I’ve learnt about each skill and included links to previous posts with more information.
Cornering
Cornering is one of those fundamental skills you need to perfect if you’re going to be a good bike rider. The most important thing I learnt about cornering is that you ‘go where you look’. That means if you look to your right or left, you’ll head that way, so in cornering you need to look towards the spot where you will exit the corner.
Read here to learn more road bike cornering tips.
Braking
When I first started riding, I had…
