You may all remember my last thread about teaching my friend to ride a bike. Well she did learn and at Christmas she managed a short outing with her husband, he was over the moon.
Today we went out along the road and cycled up the Lord's Highway. We were out for about 2 hours in total. I worked hard to build her confidence, to get her out of the habit of grabbing at the brakes and to have some fun. Going up hill wasn't too bad, most of them she could ride up ok but the steeper one she couldn't as changing gear made her panic at the last minute. Coming down hill is going to take a lot longer so we worked on very gentle slopes and freewheeling whilst making silly noises and giving her something else to think about.
It was hard for me at times to cycle so very slowly but I did enjoy myself. I need to know how I can take this forward. If I am doing the right thing and what else I might say to help her relax. I set her little goals like increasing the cadence between two trees, relaxing the arms, saying 'weeeeeee' down the slopes.
When we set off her speed was 4.2mph, by the end of the ride I had managed to get her to cycle along at around 6.5mph and her maximum speed was 10mph. I am not interested in the actual speed, nor am I concerned about informing her of the speed as I want to build her confidence not squash it completely. What I did explain was that cycling very slowly was more likely to cause a wobble and this helped her to go that little bit faster.
Thank you