6 Cycling Mistakes you need to avoid

There are plenty of pitfalls you may encounter when you’re getting into this beautiful sport, and I’m going to be honest—I’ve encountered a few of them myself. In this article, I thought I’d share a few more mistakes you may want to try to avoid when getting into road cycling.

1. Forgetting Spares When you’re looking forward to your ride, you rush out the door super excited, get 10 minutes down the road, and then suddenly realize you’ve forgotten your spares, no tools, nothing to fix a puncture with. You’re kind of riding naked, so to speak. But you decide to ride on anyway, risking it. The last time you punctured was years ago. Then suddenly, the inevitable happens, and you end up on the roadside needing to call for help. It’s all getting a little bit depressing. You wish you turned around and gone back for your spares because then you’d have been able to finish your ride. Now you’re waiting for someone to pick you up. Your ride’s over. It’s a ride-ending mistake. Try to avoid it.
2. Not Dressing Right for the Conditions If you cannot dress right for the conditions you’re riding in, it can be a costly error. I think there’s a good rule of thumb: it’s always best to overdress rather than underdress because you can always peel those layers off and cool yourself down. If you’re out on the bike and you get cold and don’t have any clothes to warm yourself up with, it is very, very hard to get warm. It’s going to make for an uncomfortable ride because you can be freezing. You’re not going to enjoy yourself as much, and you’re not going to ride as hard either because once you get cold, it’s really hard for your muscles to perform in the way you want them to. So, layer up if you can. Bring a nice light rain jacket, and you can simply peel those layers off as you get warm, get cold, peel them back on, and keep on riding. Summertime, I’d always recommend bringing a light rain jacket like this too in your rain pocket, unless you are really confident that it is not going to tip it down because most of the year when you’re riding, conditions are so changeable, and it can help just to have that insurance policy for when the rain does begin to fall on your shoulders or your head when you’re back. Thank you.
3. Biting Off More Than You Can Chew This is what I’m sure you may be familiar with—biting off more than you can chew, getting carried away, and realizing you’ve set yourself the energy task of a long, hard ride. You run out of steam, and you’re beginning to struggle. Now, this isn’t necessarily a mistake. It’s more a mistake to get disheartened by it and put yourself off trying it again because I think the key takeaway is, if you have tried this, you’ve done too much, you can’t quite manage what you set out to achieve. It’s then not learning from your errors, not thinking about why it went wrong, not getting a bit more training, not staying patient, and not getting back out on that road and trying it again. Hang in there, keep working, and you can achieve what you want.
4. Forgetting Nutrition You’ve just started your ride. You feel great. You get caught up in the moment, enjoying the sights, the sounds of the road, and your legs feel great. But then a few hours down the line, you begin to feel those telltale signs of fatigue and hunger, and you realize you just have forgotten to eat or drink anything. This is such a common mistake by beginners and pros alike, and it can be quite catastrophic because once you get to that point, it’s quite hard to bring yourself back ’round, and you end up feeling like you’re dragging yourself home for the rest of the ride. So, the best way to combat this is to try to be really on it with your nutrition. Try to have a little bit of something every 15 or 20 minutes or so from the start of your ride so you don’t find yourself in that situation of far too much, far too late.
5. Getting Your Bike Fit Wrong Getting your body fit wrong or even the frame size wrong on the bike you ride is a big mistake. If you think it may be happening to you, I say the symptoms of this are just not feeling comfortable on your bike, not managing to put the power out, and cycling just feeling a whole lot harder than you thought it would be. If this is happening to you, don’t let your head drop. What I’d recommend is getting a bike fit or checking out some of the many videos on our channel, which will give you some advice and tips on how to get your bike set up correctly so you can enjoy cycling and also get the most out of it. Because there’s nothing more frustrating than getting on your bike and it’s just not fitting correctly. It is a big mistake to make, but it is fixable.
6. Ignoring Wind Conditions Flying out on the road in the wind is an amazing feeling, but it can give you a bit of a false sense of security. If you’re heading out the door and you don’t quite realize it’s a tailwind, that’s quite dangerous because then when you do turn around, you realize you’re riding back home to a big old headwind. You’ve got a long old day ahead. Now, it’s an easy one to avoid—check the weather forecast before you head out on your bike. Or if your route goes over various different areas, a good little tip is to use a mapping platform to put your route in and check the weather forecast on each point of your planned routes to get a really good idea of where that tailwind and, more importantly, where that headwind is going to hit. But still, enjoy the tailwind while you can.

So, there you go—a few more beginner mistakes that you may want to try to avoid. I hope they don’t happen to you. Let us know in the comment section down below if I missed any or maybe there’s something really specific that’s happened to yourself on the bike, and you’re just starting out and you want to share it with everyone. Hope it happens to no one. But now I’ve kind of got lost, which is another mistake to make in your ride—not knowing your route or plan in advance. Although sometimes mistakes can be good because you discover roads, discover places you wouldn’t have otherwise, and it all becomes a big adventure. So, it’s not always bad news. Thanks for reading, everyone, until the next article.