Prepping for your first long cycling outing of the year...

That's awesome!  I love doing events - they give my training some "meaning".

Just looked at the Tour de Blast - nice!  Looks very similar to a ride I did Borrego Springs/Julian/Borrego Springs in February... which was about my one year into cycling milestone.

That's a lot of climbing... :)

So, I can't actually ride a bike.  Seriously, my parents tried for many years to teach me, my husband has tried to teach me, I'm just ridiculously unbalanced I guess?  haha. BUT, I am going to try a cycling class tonight at my gym for the FIRST TIME EVER.  I'm scared but excited and I hope that I can keep my balance on a stationary bike because if I can't...well I've got bigger problems then I guess.  LOL just had to share...:)

Wow! I can't imagine not being able to ride a bike. Although, we have been trying to teach my daughter (who's five) without her training wheels. She can really move with the training wheels, but freezes up when we are practicing without the wheels. We are hoping that once it starts warming up more and we practice more often she'll get pretty soon.  She also does well and is comfortable on the trail-a-long bike that connects to our bikes.

Anyway, maybe taking a cycling class will somehow get you to try to learn to ride a bike. It is a different experience than a stationary bike. It's awesome! :)

lol sort of the same thing happened to me.  As a kid, I did great with training wheels but then my parents took them off and attempted teaching me to ride without the training wheels.  Well, I fell and hurt myself pretty badly and any time my parents tried to get me back on the bike I pretty much threw a tantrum.  I never got around to trying much after that and I think at my age using training wheels would be pretty ridiculous LOL.  I don't really feel like I'm missing out on much...sometimes I wish I could in the summer time when my husband bikes down by the water (we live near the verrazano bridge in Brooklyn) but I figure I can just walk down there too lol.

A stationary bike is pretty easy to balance on :)...but I also doubt it would help you much on a real bike.  The issue is this - the faster you go on the bike, the easier it is to balance.  The problem is that when you're not confident, you don't want to go fast, you go very slow... then you're very wobbly, so you feel less confident, then you slow down more, then you tip over...

The "solution" is that when you're wobbly, to go faster... but that's VERY hard to do the first few times...

Then once you get good at balancing you can try clipless-pedals/shoes... that's a whole new level of embarrassment the first few times you come up to a stop and can't get your feet to disconnect from the pedals and you slowly tip over...  Did that in downtown Tucson a few years ago...