Were you athletic as a kid?

[IFjane]

Five-One & mimi - I'm sooooo glad I didn't have to compete with you two as a child - I was going to marry Paul!

I, too, was very active as a child. Outside all the time. Rarely played with dolls or girly things - preferred instead to dress up the family dog & drag her around the neighborhood. I have been riding bikes since I was 5. We lived exactly one mile from the neighborhood elementary school & all the kids rode their bikes to and from school every day. (Kindergarten through 6th grade.) Got my first 10-speed at the age of 20 but quit riding regularly a couple years later. In the summers I swam and water skied (does "skied" have two i's?). In addition to riding my bike, we had horses & I rode/showed them. I never participated in organized sports.

To my mom's credit, she tried to make me more girly by enrolling me in ballet lessons as a child - I think I lasted two sessions.

I took up riding (bikes) regularly again at about age 43 with a mountain bike, then switched to primarily road biking about 5 years ago. No, it was not difficult for me to ride again. That said, I do carry a scar from chain ring bite from my early attempts at clipless pedals!

[7rider]

I’ve noticed a lot of posts with the recurring theme of people having a hard time getting comfortable on their bikes. Some just don’t feel stable; others have problems learning to shift or problems going clipless. So I’m just curious, have the people who take to all the things associated with riding a bit easier than others been “athletes” all their lives and those experiencing more difficulty new to the “athletic” world?

Sooooo NOT athletic here.
I was an overweight couch potato. My sister would drag me kicking and screaming to the YMCA to swim and would have me ride a bike alongside her when she ran. She may as well have been pulling teeth. I just wanted to sit and read and talk to no one.

I can't say I took (or currently take) to any athletic endeavor easily. I have the natural grace of an ox. If I can't bull my way through anything through sheer determination and brute force, I don't try. Consequently, you'll never see me on a dance floor (unless I've had about 6 gin and tonics!).

[IFjane]

Hey everyone - Regina's serving gin & tonics over here! (get in line!)

[7rider]

Hey, it's FRIDAY!! WooHoo!! Who needs cookies?
(just don't ask me to dance!)

[spokewench]

I guess I was athletic. I rode horses, ran track, played basketball with the boys, ice skated, played a little softball when I was young, played basketball and volleyball in college. I wasn't really a very good "ball" athlete, just fast so I would get put on teams.

I did not really have trouble with learning to ride a road bike, but I did have trouble learning how to mountain bike. The riding a bike on rocky terrain and the swift changes in ups and downs caused me some problems with shifting gears, and balance. It has taken me a long time to become a passable bike handler off road - just don't have enough guts.

The road bike after the first initial wow, this bike has skinny tires and is light sensation, was pretty easy to get used to.

[five one]

I wish Title IX existed when I was a teenager. Then I might have taken up a sport in high school. The boys had the inter-school sports, we had sports clubs. Oh, and cheerleading which I was soooooo not into.

Those rubber boots only kept our shoes *sort of* dry. Popcicle toes were the norm. My snowsuits had elastic that went under my foot to keep the pants tucked in. When I walked to school, I wore two or three pairs of tights. Girls couldn't wear pants to school back then. Somehow we survived. And now look back on those times with great fondness.

IFJane, Paul was spoken for by my best friend Debbie, so you couldn't have had him anyway. You can have him now, though . But I don't reckon Paul will be marrying again.

Mimi, I only wore makeup back then to keep up with my friends. Totally peer pressure. Nowadays I can be out the door in five minutes.

[maillotpois]

They put me into remedial PE when I was in elementary school. That's back when they had funding for that sort of thing.

Eye-hand coordination, ball sports, not my thing. I'd ride my horse all day and hike through the woods. But because they put me in a "special" program I always believed I wasn't an athlete.

Until I bought a bike 6 years ago.

[li10up]

I loved reading all your stories (and keep them coming) but I'm really interested in seeing if there is a correlation between being and athlete and being able to start riding without difficulty. Does being an "athlete" translate into picking up sports, i.e. cycling, easier?

[Bikingmomof3]

I danced ballet until I was 18, was a down hill skier, and on the swim team yet I never really considered myslef athletic.

[IFjane]

IFJane, Paul was spoken for by my best friend Debbie, so you couldn't have had him anyway. You can have him now, though . But I don't reckon Paul will be marrying again.

Oh, I don't want Paul now....he's old and wrinkled....(Jane is looking in the mirror.) OMG!!!

[aicabsolut]

I was pretty athletic.

Started riding horses at age 5. (still ride when I get the chance)
I did a slew of track and field events until high school, when I just focused on sprinting and hurdling...until I got injured. In high school and college there wasn't much time for anything besides horses, that being a year-round sport.

As a younger kid, though, I played softball, basketball, soccer. I didn't live in a good area for biking, so I was pretty much out only occasionally on a cruiser. I wasn't good at some other wheeled balance sports like rollerblading or skateboarding. I am supposedly built for swimming, but I had a bad experience when I was learning as a toddler, and aside from that, I find it to be NO fun. I'm a land sports girl. I've been weight lifting since maybe 7th grade.

Getting my road bike recently was a big adjustment. I could ride it fine--I mean, you never forget, right? But I'm still a noob, so the body position along with balance whatnot is taking some time with respect to taking hands off the bars. I wasn't the most graceful learning to go clipless, but I let my nerves make me tense (same sorts of tensing up and getting nervous put me on the ground a few times from horses as a young kid, so no changes there!). The whole hill climbing thing is also new because there were NO hills at home.

I'm also new to the whole endurance training thing. That could be the biggest factor in terms of athletics background.

[five one]

So, as I said, I’m curious – were you an “athlete” prior to taking up cycling? If so (or not), how hard was it for you to start cycling, i.e. stability, shifting, clipless, etc.?

I didn't have any stability issues starting out on a mountain bike with wide slicks. Shifting wasn't a problem then because the shifters on this old bike had numbers on them. Going clipless was more of an issue because I didn't take the time to practice and figure out which foot to clip out on. I fell over many times, I'm embarrassed to say, and at least once took another rider down with me . When I got my road bike, I recall the shifting learning curve being rather great. I have Campy shifters, and I had a hard time remembering which did what. I threw chains going uphill. I didn't downshift before stopping. Then I started to ride behind DH and mimicked his shifting and cadence. That helped. Putting my bike on a trainer and WATCHING what each lever did was probably the thing that helped most. After awhile - like driving a car - it became second nature. I still look down at my rear cogs sometimes to see where I am, but most of the time I just know where I am by the way the bike's handling. It all takes time and practice.

[Pax]

I loved reading all your stories (and keep them coming) but I'm really interested in seeing if there is a correlation between being and athlete and being able to start riding without difficulty. Does being an "athlete" translate into picking up sports, i.e. cycling, easier?

I read a couple of studies about that (sorry I can't remember the source), the gist was the people who learn a skill as a child actually form specific neural pathways that people who learn the same skill as adults don't. Anecdotally I have found this to be true, my friends and I (all old athletes) seem to be able to pick up new skills much easier than our non-athletic friends.

[Eden]

They put me into remedial PE when I was in elementary school. That's back when they had funding for that sort of thing.

Eye-hand coordination, ball sports, not my thing. I'd ride my horse all day and hike through the woods. But because they put me in a "special" program I always believed I wasn't an athlete.

Until I bought a bike 6 years ago.

Can't really say I was in remedial PE - but I've always been the smallest - so as far as school and organized sports go I certainly was never the one picked first (or second or third...) and ball sports have never exactly been my forte. I was always the one who could climb all of the way up the rope, do the most chin ups and I could always impress the bigger girls by leg pressing the whole weight stack.... (to tell the truth I don't think I could do that anymore). Cycling has always been ideal for me since endurance is my strong suit, but few teen sports are based around it, except perhaps swimming and cross country. By the time I was in high school I was doing long rides - I had a favorite 70 mile loop, but most other teenagers don't exactly have an understanding or much of an appreciation for it. Mostly I got asked what's wrong with your hands because I had bike glove tan lines. I certainly never though of myself as an athelete until very recently when I took up racing and found that I'm not half bad.

[emily_in_nc]

I did not really have trouble with learning to ride a road bike, but I did have trouble learning how to mountain bike. The riding a bike on rocky terrain and the swift changes in ups and downs caused me some problems with shifting gears, and balance. It has taken me a long time to become a passable bike handler off road - just don't have enough guts.

The road bike after the first initial wow, this bike has skinny tires and is light sensation, was pretty easy to get used to.

What spokewrench said....

However, unlike SW, I was totally unathletic as a child, asthmatic, weak, sickly, sucked at all team sports and anything requiring running, always picked last for teams, used excuses to get out of gym class, you know the type! However, I did always have a bike -- tricycles as a young child, my first two-wheeled Schwinn with training wheels at six, and a bike of some sort from then on, at least through Jr. High, when I had a 10-speed with drop bars and downtube shifters, a red, white, and blue (very patriotic) "Free Spirit" (I think that was it) from Sears. I think that saved me from having a difficult time picking up cycling again as an adult since riding was one thing I knew how to do (not that I ever road very far or fast as a child, though).

My DH (who was a semi-serious roadie when we met) bought me a Nishiki road bike (21 speeds, I think) when I was around 25, and I've been riding on and off for the past 20 years (sometimes with several years off). For several years I rode only on the back of a tandem only, so I probably lost some handling skills then, but after that I even learned to ride a recumbent, which is when I learned to ride clipless (other than stoking a tandem, where clipless is a no-brainer). I then went back to an upright road bike with skinny tires (this was in 2003), which took only a short adjustment period to learn how to use the STI shifters.

But mountain biking on trails (which I just started trying to do last summer) is an entirely different story, as spokewrench said. I'm too fearful, I bail out very quickly if anything gets scary, and I have a very hard time with tight turns and slow-speed maneuvers and all the weight shifting involved. That may come from being severely unathletic as a child. I remember my DH trying to teach me golf -- what a disaster. Just couldn't do the proper weight shifting to have a decent stroke, and he thought that was because I avoided all games where a ball was involved as a child, like softball, where I might have learned that weight shift. It could be related....

Emily