My lad worried me to death last night.
He decided to go training after school with a friend. So he removed the road bike from the Turbos, lowered the saddle and set off.
Tbh I thought he’d be back by 6pm, but by 7pm…8pm…9pm he was still out.
Obviously something was wrong there was no way a lad only 13 last week could ride that long, and he had no spares and his mobile was at home.
9.30pm he called us from a villagers phone told me where he was so I could collect him.
He had managed to get the chain stuck between the cassette and hub, I suspect he had’nt fitted the wheel correctly earlier.
I had to remove the cassette to sort it, apparently he had spent hours trying to fix it and was very embarassed and apologetic, plus he somehow lost the computer transmiter.
Any way all sorted now.
So to the question 13! too young?

No. Depends on how worldly wise the kid is of course Set rules and so on that are sensible. time to be back, phone if not going to be back by that sort of time etc

At 13 I was going a way for weekends youth hostelling without an adult

tbh i think it depends on how capable a rider they are. i think 13 is possibly too young though. Thinking back i did my first ‘proper’ solo rides when i was about 15.

I started all my solo rides when I was 11 but that was 1981 so there was less traffic to worry about. I went out on my road bike recently and for the first time I didn’t feel happy or safe. I have ridden in London, Edinburgh, Paris, Milan and been fine but in this last year I’ve been to too many friends funerals and that was always playing on my mind. I’m finding it harder to motivate myself to ride my bike on road and off road.

I’m not trying to scaremonger, it’s just how I feel right now.

No it sounds just about right.

but he should let you know where he’s going, what the back up plan is and take a mobile. Common sense is often learned by faffing it up. Although it sounds like he had plenty of initiative to get help anyway.

I remember when I was 11-12 I used to go out riding on my tod, (this is only 10 years ago FWIW) and on one occasion decided to ride to the coast and back, alone, which was nearly 70 miles on the road. I made it, but I was shattered.

My parents didn’t seem to worry, they bought me a mobile phone so I could always be in touch. I’d say since about 13 I was going out regularly on my own.

I guess about right. Maybe with a mate at that age on roads he knows and on own in a year or so. Out and about on my own at 10 or 11, paper round at 12 – but I don’t think I did any “training” rides alone until I was about 13-14. But then again I have a friend who sailed his drascomb lugger to the Scilly Isles alone at 13 and just radioed in to the coastguard at the beginning of every day as he went along the coast so I guess it depends on environment and experience as much as age. Have a look at this site or plenty of other similar ones – Trace mobile. Quite nice way for M&D to feel at least a bit of reassurance.

Sounds like he tried to sort everything out quite well, maybe a bike maintenance course is what he needs?!

My dad was really strict about riding on the roads and completely “banned” it for as long as he could. even when i went to uni he refused to take the bike in the car when he dropped me off. He was run over as a kid and ridiculously paranoid about the roads.

The result of this is that i just went behind his back and did it anyway! i just got very imaginative making up excuses etc..

At 12 and again at 13 we did a school cycling trip around holland. Each day we were given a rough route and just told to make our way there independently! Learnt loads of things on those trips and have some fantastic memories, not all cycling related 😉 Your lad has now learnt that it’s useful to carry a mobile……

13 is plenty old enough. I would disappear for hours on my bike at that age (again only twelve years ago. Occasionally my bike would break and I’d have to walk home, had to do 6 miles once which was a bit annoying, I was quite late home. Don’t wrap them in cotton wool, a bit of experience getting himself out of a scape or having to eat humble pie and ask for help will do him good.

It’s character building stuff. Besides there are worse things than bikes, he could be out getting paralytic on white lightning and fathering children.

You have to post on a forum to ask advice?

How old are you?

No offense intended, but realy……….

I was off on weekend bike camping trips on my own at that age. Parents were more blase then.

However wise or not it is to LET him go out on his own, he’ll no doubt be more capable of dealing with a future experience based on his experience of today’s.
He’ll have learnt (hopefully) that there’s some times where no matter what you do you have to abandon a ride, and how best to perform the abandonment.
In future, make sure he (a) always takes his mobile with him and that it’s charged, (b) learns about limit screws.

Rules here are phone, keys and money had to be carried when leaving the house. It would have been better for you if he had phoned earlier but he’ll have learned something about life and fending for himself. You can yell at him if he does the self same thing next time 🙂
I’m assuming he stayed off the busy roads in your area. Well done for encouraging sensible risk taking and self reliance. Teenage years are the worst they do improve by about 19/20.

49.
Don’t need advice just interested in your opinions.
Part of it is that only a week ago he was 12, 13 sounds so much older!.
I don’t have an issue with him being out all day, in fact I’ve not seen him since Saturday morning. But somehow riding a race bike, having to deal with dual carriageways, bypasses, getting 23c tyres on and off (some guys on here can’t do that)broken chains etc etc seems a lot different.

I think the answer is to make sure he is prepared, that was the problem the other night. If I had got him ready he would have been ok.
He was over eager to get out as he is pretty fresh from a broken leg and want’s to race again asap.

What I did’nt say was that he called me whilst I was at work to say he was getting ready to go out, so I could only advise him over the phone as what to do.

would depend on so many factors for me

Alone /in a group
Familair / un familiar route
Busy roads rush hour/quiet and safe
Sensible child /would not trust
Bike reliable/unreliable
able to fix/unable to fix
light/ dark
etc

Whatever age you decide is ok you will fret nature of being a parent

That’s the very same age as I was on my first cycling tour. Three of us went off for a jaunt in the Lake District, complete with cr@ppy old tent.

We had a few mechanical scrapes which we muddled / bodged through, ran out of cash and lived on biscuits, got pissed for the first time and played tin whistles for money in Keswick. I also managed to very, very nearly cycle underneath a moving caravan (lesson learnt – go slower) and my mate jumped a wall into a campsite and landed on an occupied tent – brilliant!

Life’s rich tapestry and all that.

I reckon 13 on very busy roads/dual carriageways is a bit young, purely because he won’t have the same level of road awareness as an adult and won’t be sufficiently experienced in anticipating the movement of car drivers.

However, quiet roads or mountain biking, 13 is definitely old enough. You can get a paper round at 14 and you don’t see their parents driving them around in case something happens.

Set ground rules, i.e. always carry a phone and stay off A roads, but then let him do his own thing and learn from his mistakes.

i think i was about 13-14. you have to start learning at some point, i reckon 13 is old enough. teach him some roadside bodge/fixes and get him to take a mobile. i remember riding home from near whitby to middlesbrough with a tyre stuffed full of grass, because i had ran out of inner tubes and patches:-( had my fair share of crashes, schoolwork went downhill and my parents probably wished i never got a bike.

Has he got a coach/trainer?

If not he was not “training” just going for a ride 🙂

if he’s ‘road safe’ let him go….’

pushing builds character, that’s why i carry nothing more than my mobile phone.

Huh?

He trains with his clubs youth team, trains with the whole club over winter and rides with the adults on the mountainbike night rides.
He does’nt have a personal coach or trainer his only an average kid not youth squad quality.
But he has got races all year and is training after breaking his leg ski-ing earlier this year. His first friendly event after the accident saw him came way last.