Customer Reviews

Bicycling Magazine's Complete Book of Road Cycling Skills : Your Guide to Riding Faster, Stronger, Longer, and Safer

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As a long-time car driver who just made the 'switch' to cycle commuting, I had a lot of anxieties regarding safe and intelligent operation of a bicycle on roads shared with automobiles. This book served the purpose admirably and got me riding safe and sane on the streets of Manhattan, something I wouldn't have believed possible a couple months ago.

There are sections on how to equip your bike, how to follow the rules of the road, and tips and tricks bikers need to know to coexist safely in traffic. There are also sections on what to eat and drink, how to train effectively to increase your abilities, and how to get into serious long-distance touring - things which I hadn't originally been interested in but which were fun to read about. I think what I liked best about the book was that it was clearly written by enthusiasts who've spent a lot of time riding and a lot of time thinking about how to convey their skills and enthusiasms to the public.

If I had a criticism, it'd be that the book suffers by being a collection of separate magazine articles not originally intended for publication in this form, so some information is repeated and coherence is sort of loose. But it's not a major criticism and I'd recommend the book anyway.

Being new to road biking I wanted a book that covered the basics as well as one that gave guidance as to how I could improve once over the initial stage of riding. This book is very comprehensive in this regard. It is particularly useful in some of the training areas in that it makes suggestions that are not too overly structured, as some books are inclined to do, but at the same time maintain the overall training effect.It reinforces this approach by relating training regimes with real life experiences of riders, rather than adopt a "textbook" approach.I found the book extremely useful and fully recommend it.

I guess for $11-12 you can take your chances with the book, but I don't believe you will learn much from it unless you are absolutely new to bicycling. But even then do not expect too much. As another reviewer said, many suggestions are rather simplistic and dubious. 'Breathing through your nose' is one of them. And there are such parts as how to avoid a rock on the road. It takes the authors about 120 words to tell you how to do that. If you thought that there is some magic to their advice--there is none, their point can be reduced to "first turn the handlebar to one side, then correct your balance by quickly turning the other way." And there are four pages devoted to listing food you can get in fast food restuarants or convenience stores. I am sure you need a book to tell you that Arby's sells Light Roast Turkey Deluxe and Taco Bell has soft chicken taco without cheese. In general, what they cover on about 200 pages could be explained in 1/4 of that (or less). Further, the book is very uneven, sometimes it treats you like an idiot and sometimes gives you advice that is more appropriate for serious riders (several hundred miles a week). Considering that it has been written by the editors of "Bicycling Magazine," it is rather embarrassing... Again, $11-12 is not much today so try if you want, you may learn a thing or two, but maybe you should explore other titles first.

This book seems more concerned with anecdotes about professional cyclists than it is with providing information for the recreational cyclist. It has way too much crowing by the author about his cycling exploits and some dubious advice ("Breathe through your nose.") There is some mystifying blather ("The modern-day road ride is a big-ring hammerfest, where style and form disappear as riders start getting blown off the back when the action heats up.") and an interview with some guy who rides 1,000 miles a week-worthless for the average rider. Some good advice about hydration and safety but not much else.

This book is broken down into short chapters which can each be read in about three to five minutes. Like Bicycling magazine itself, it manages to be accurate and somewhat helpful, albeit completely insubstantial. I found that reading this book inspired me to ride, which is always a good thing. The subject of road cycling, however, is treated in such a superficial and scattershot manner that the book will probably be of little long term benefit. Like a cliff bar, it's sugary, fast acting, short term fuel for the road.

Some have criticized this book as if it has little useful to say. But, I found it quite helpful, and I have been cycling for most of the last forty years.

I bought the book because I wanted to dust off my bicycle again after a dozen sedentary years. The last book on cycling I read was Eugene Sloan's "Complete Book of Bicycling." I would say the subtitle is very descriptive of what this book offers: "Your Guide to Riding Faster, Stronger, Longer, and Safer."

The book is written by people who race bicycles. They explain that many training techniques for racing used wisely will make the touring cyclist a much better rider. I found some of the suggestions about when to drink how much water and caution against overreaching and overtraining to be very helpful, but those were not the only things. I can endorse the encouragement to work for smoothness in pedalling as well as a higher cadence in a lower gear instead of lugging it in a gear that is just a little too high.

Because of extra years and extra pounds it will be a while before I can reap all of the benefits I might from this book.

This book comprise of 45 articles which are neatly grouped into eigth sections. There are lot of good tips in here, especially for the beginning cyclist. But some subjects are always so extensive that is difficult to include all of it in one article. Despite of that fact I particularly liked the chapter describing how the three different energy systems work ("Pedal Power").

The eight sections are: The basics, essential skills, safety in traffic, riding stronger and longer, year-round improvement, fueling your engine, medical concerns and special bikes.

This book was written primarily for the strait road/race bicycle, (the one with the curved handlebars). If this is your bike I recommend it, even more so if you intend to race. However, except for a brief topic of converting a mountain bike for the road, there is no mention of hybrids in the book. Maybe the book was made before they were available, hence the info on converting a mountain bike for the road. If you have a road bike with upright handlebars, (hybrid, comfort, touring), you won't find any mention of your bike in the book. And the pictures and info in the chapter on bicycle parts is all geared toward the road/racing bike.
However the book is still worthwhile reading, particularly the chapters on safety, and road skills, dealing with exhaustion, heat, and cold among other helpful topics. I wouldn't recommend it for the advanced cyclist, or those that don't have a dedicated road/race bike, as a first book. But there is still some good stuff here. The black and white drawings of streetwise safety ideas I found particularly helpful.
fiannor

I have been cycling recreationally for a number of years, and want to learn more and improve.

I have looked at a couple of books, but this one is excellent:
1. All the chapters are short, relevant and written in plain understandable English
2. Within a couple of pages you have several useful tips
3. It has helped me dramatically improve very quickly

Some information in this book I find implausible, and some I /know/ to be false, which further reduces any confidence I may have in the rest of the information. For a subject like cycling, you need someone who understands the underlying physics as well as helpful subjective seat-of-the-pants techniques. Ed Pavelka seems to only have the latter skill, which gives his advice no firm foundation.

A case in point is the brief article on steering. His final conclusion is sound - that countersteering (see Wikipedia for an explanation) is how you steer effectively, but he prefaces it by asserting erroneously that there are 3 ways to steer. To paraphrase, he says you can steer simply by pointing the handlebars where you want to go, without leaning the bike at up to 15mph (defying the laws of physics), or you can steer just by leaning the way you want to go, or you can countersteer.

There is only one way to steer: countersteering. Most of us never realize that is what we're doing. Most of us learned to do it unconsciously on the day we first learned to ride, and from then on we muddle through with a unconscious "micro-countersteer" that starts the bike falling sideways, which we catch by turning the corner. The key to good steering is to use deliberate, active and controlled countersteering - a skill which becomes obviously essential on a motorcycle, where the increased weight makes it impossible to muddle through a turn on unconscious control.

He comes to the right conclusion - so what's the big deal? Well, to me, the big deal is he's made me read and try to understand false information which is of no use whatsoever, and /his/ understanding of the subject is flawed. How am I supposed to trust anything else he says, if it's nothing more than his assertions based on his own gut feeling?

Frequently, theory alone is insufficient, very occasionally practice trumps theory, but best of all is practice based on theory. _Sound_ theory.