getting my girlfriend into biking

she enjoys it, and i love taking her out….this is her on a hire bike round Clumber Park. Any words of encouragement for her?

nice fuzz 🙂

Don’t tuck her pants in her socks 🙄

don’t do it, it’s the perfect escape

Stick with it, even if Mr Pook’s a sh*te photographer 😆

“go on girl” or “you can…..hang on, dont move, it might be broken…” ?:)

Glad to see someone else who has successfully got their other half into biking. But you do feel very guilty when they bounce on the floor and skin their face from top to bottom, or bounce on their ass and end up with a 1ft diameter hard bruise.

But you do feel very guilty when they bounce on the floor and skin their face from top to bottom, or bounce on their ass and end up with a 1ft diameter hard bruise.

can’t see that happening around clumber park somehow.

excuse the blur. Phone camera, while riding, and looking/snapping backwards

So ends your freedom.

It is great fun to begin with but the time comes when you cant go for a ride by yourself.

I loved it and then i had to keep waiting for her at the top of climbs and the bottom of descents.

Soon becomes hard work unless she is quicker than you

can’t see that happening around clumber park somehow.

Happened to mine on the road just after a 10 mile off-road ride including jumps and drops “training” for the Alps.

And whats this freedom going rubbish – Mine SUGGESTED a holiday in the Alps biking and bought me some new kit to go with her, but never complains if I want to go with just my male mates. Some of you need better other halves if its the end of your freedom 😆 !

Send her here

http://www.forestfreeride.co.uk

A girls only course will improve her confidence no end…it really will help stop the domestics that come about when she starts wanting to ride more technical stuff. 😉

Cheers
Stuart

Mrs Beard has got into biking and really enjoys it. Though this wasn’t always the case. For a long time rides used to involve getting roughly half way round – normally the exact point where to turn back would take just as long as to carry on – then a wee tantrum. The bike would have get thrown into the undergrowth and there would be a somewhat heated discussion in the middle of the forest. It is at this point that some random forest user would appear, which always caused embarrassment on my part. We’d finally get going again but normally now both in sullen moods and just wanting home. We’d get home then she’d apologise and promise not to do it again and could we go out next weekend.

And repeat.

Thankfully all this (sort of) ended after she went on one of the excellent Dirt Diva’s courses out in Swinley Forest. She has done two courses now, came top of the class both times and has made a whole group of girly MTB buddies and is keen to do some racing. So I can highly recommend a course, dirt Divas works so well as they run it exclusively for women so they feel more relaxed.

Best bit was on her first course all the women admitted to throwing tantrums when out riding with partners.

I knew it…

Be warned that whatever advice you give moments before a stack will haunt you in every future social gathering. Somewhere in the crowd at some wedding reception you’ll here ‘….and then he said ‘feather your brakes’….’

If my other half threw a tantrum I’d simply ride off and leave her to it. Fortunately that’s not happened in 10 years!

Good stuff. I got my GF cycling in to work along a cycle path, she’d never go on road. Mtb hasn’t been so successful. she was good first time out but I think she’s got a bit intimidated now. Still working on it.

I like the look of the forestfreeride course, I wonder how big the groups are? £110 is a lot if theres a group of 6 people and each person only gets on go, for that I’d rather spend the extra and take her for a week somewhere properly mountainous and spend all day doing skills with her. Although she can actually DO all the skills I find she doesnt USE them on the trail, which is very frustrating!

Skills courses? Why not just ride more and tricky trails?

I wouldn’t know what it’s like to ride with a partner but surely you’d want just enjoy the experience together and show a lot of patience if said partner is inexperienced?

have just purchased a nice exhire scott for the missus. Mrs Hog then completed the entire rutland water loop first go !! i was amazed.

ill try her (lol) at clumber park or sherwood pines this weekend.

only prob is she now emptied my spare box for upgrades and i lost all my spares kit !! what have i done !!

GOOD LUCK !!

I’ve wanted to do a ride from Ullapool to Bonar Bridge (about 60km and fairly remote) but various things transpired against it. I’m planning to do it this year and the wife has decided she’ll do it as well to raise money for a hospital charity. She hasn’t ridden off road before or ridden at all for some years, hasn’t done anything strenuous for a few years so is overweight and unfit. She has announced that I have to get her fit to do it. Not sure where to start.

Skills courses can work for some people but my girlfriend wasn’t fired with enthusiasm by the one she went on, it made her feel pretty inadequate as a rider when in actual fact she’s no worse than the majority of people out there.

My top tip is that you can avoid a lot of the pouting and tantrums if you go riding in a group with other people. Note that this applies to the ladies out there as well as the men.

Coffeeking, group size is 4 max (unless the group know each other and request more, in that case max is 6), Girls Only courses are 2 day affairs so there’s plenty of opportunity for practice 😉

Cheers
Stuart

Prepare to row 🙂

excuse the blur. Phone camera, while riding, and looking/snapping backwards

Oh, OK then.

I tried, very gently, to get Mrs North into riding. She enjoys it – bit of a fearless descender – but really struggles with fitness. She’s not someone naturally drawn to taking exercise, so the bike remains unused for ages and then riding it again is hard work (not that it isn’t hard work for me, and I’m on a bike six or seven days a week).

Keep encouraging her, and don’t expect her to love it in the same way you do.

mikejd – good on you and Mrs jd. Start gently. Help her work out an exercise and riding plan that starts slowly and builds up. That way, she’ll feel a great sense of achievement.

Got my gf into biking a few years back. She started off on a Schwinn mesa which was way to large then i got her a little Steel Kona. She used this for the first time at Afan and loved every minute even when she went straight over the bars and crashed into the ground. She now Commutes on a Roadrat and also has a Genesis Altitude 853. She loves getting a good ride in!!

Mrs TR yesterday, at the bottom of a very wet and slidy section of the Black run at Coed Trallwm

for those having a go at my photography skills, here’s one taken whilst not riding, and aiming backwards….

My mrs is getting into it. We went to Morzine this year. Not having to ride up made it a lot more fun.

Pook, those may be more useful for those wishing to follow MrsFlash’s advice…

Prepare to row

🙂

My SO rides and its great, as it means that pretty much every holiday is a riding holiday, and if I am de-motivated she nags me to go riding and vice versa.

Best story I have heard however is from Mike @ Switchbacks who commented that one of his funniest weeks was when a couple went out for a week with them, and the bloke was nagging his missus to speed up etc, so he coached her for a week and by the end of it she was *much* faster than her bloke on the downhills, as she had less bad habits to correct and listened to the advice, unfortunately the bloke didn’t like this so went off in a strop.

Best thing I did to encourage my SO to get into riding, as she hadn’t ridden a bike for around 10 years before we started seeing each other, was get her a decent bike and shorts.

I don’t know about anyone else but I see an awful lot of blokes out riding with their girlfriends doing laps around them, where they are riding a 2 to 3 K FS, whilst there girlfriend struggles on a £80 supermarket special that barely works, and then wonder why they can’t keep up/hate it.

My wife is a fab rider. I bought her first MTB for her in about 96. Since then she’s had a Stumjumper Pro, two S-Works hardtail frames and now has a Titus Motolite. We went to Switchbacks where she did a five foot drop that i bottled and we’ve also been to Morzine and Verbier. She’s very fast, has great balance and is fearless.
I say encourage your missus as much as possible, riding together is great; we always had something to chat about whether it was planning rides, technique or equipment.
She had our daughter 4 months ago so is chomping at the bit to get out again. She’s talking about getting an Intense as an incentive.

I don’t know about anyone else but I see an awful lot of blokes out riding with their girlfriends doing laps around them, where they are riding a 2 to 3 K FS, whilst there girlfriend struggles on a £80 supermarket special that barely works, and then wonder why they can’t keep up/hate it.

Yep. I’ve seen that, too.

I always encouraged Mrs North to have the nicest bike she wanted, for that very reason. She’s pragmatic (her MTB and road bikes aren’t anything flash to the likes of us; to “normal” people, £400 is *a lot*). Where she’s needed upgrades to increase her enjoyment – e.g. ditching useless, heavy sus forks – I’ve tried that. My view: if we’re doing something together, let’s even up the odds a bit, even if she isn’t obsessed with it as I am.

only real downside to your partner riding is seeing them crash hard. That sucks, especially when its hospital hard.

Oh yeah, and for cheaper training courses AQR run some ladies only days which are cheap and good (according to my missus).

I got my wife a little used 2nd hand Kona Caldera so that the bike wouldn’t be the weakpoint for her. Unfortunately she’s basically just scared of falling off so progress is slow – the lack of a decent summer in recent years hasn’t helped either.

Mrs kpt seems to have gotten the bug,doesn’t mind the mud and rain to much either – she even found it funny when she got her first spd’s this years and did the obligitory falling over whilst clipped in – meant i could have a good laugh then to :lol:.

My wife will have been doing it for a year next month! It is tricky and tantrums are inevitable – I find doing this with a mate and getting out as couples helps – I tend t only get tantrums when we’re out on our own really (won’t cause a scene in front of others see!)

I’ve had a hard time getting her back out recently as she had a pretty big stack at Afan (first trail centre doh!) near the bottom of Hidden Valley – to my surprise she was a total star limping back two miles on a **** up ankle and hip and was far from put off – just totally gutted.

Zooom!

That Myka FSR has been a rad little bike too if you’re prepared to risk the investment…

Proud of mine….in Slovenia, Julien Alps…