By Julie Mallis, Education Manager

A sweet and informative perspective from some of our Positive Spin Girls

In our excitement for the upcoming Women and Biking Forum, we wanted to publish a Girl’s Guide to Learn to Ride! This past winter we got to hear Nysirh’s story. She left us with these final words:

Biking makes me feel motivated. And now that I’ve learned how to ride I am excited to bike around my neighborhood and teach my older brother how to ride.

My goal for Positive Spin is to be able to ride with everyone else on the trails. I can’t wait for my class to start again in the spring!

Positive Spin returns right after the students get back from Spring Break! With regular rides along the North Shore Trail, Schiller Positive Spinners Nysirh and Isabella dedicated themselves this Fall in how to learn how to ride. As I tell my own students, I learned how to ride as an adult, so it’s really never too late!  

Through continued determination and motivation, these powerful two riders have come a long way and have some wisdom to share with others. Learning to ride is not only a physical feat, but also a mental one and the following guide works to address the full experience.

 

A Girl’s Guide to Learn to Ride

Technical Tips

1. Sit on the bike and get comfortable with that first
2. Then, put your feet on the pedals one at a time to get comfortable
3. Sit on your bike with your feet close to the ground. Use your feet to move forward and pick your feet up to practice balancing.
4. Have a friend or mentor hold your handlebars while you practice pedaling.
5. Put your dominant pedal at ‘10:00’, push your weight onto it to get started on your ride.

Tips to keep your mood up!

1. Be Confident in yourself.
2. Try your best.
3. Don’t give up, even when you are discouraged. Wanting to learn keeps [us] from giving up.
4. It’s really exciting when you first start to pedal. One time I started pedaling and I actually started to ride.
5. It can be really fun and motivating, when you make small accomplishments.
6. When I first started balancing, I was scared of falling, but you have to let go of fear.
7. Have fun while you practice!

Things I can’t wait to do

1. Learn to balance
2. Ride on the trails with everybody else
3. Teach my older brother how to ride a bike, too
4. Take my family for a bike ride on the trail!
5. Ride around the hills in my neighborhood
6. Try an electric bicycle!

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Join us at the Women & Biking Forum on Saturday, April 2nd! Hosted by BikePGH’s Spinnsters, this forum aims to inspire women to incorporate biking into their lives in the way that fits best for them, and develop strategies to break down the barriers to bicycling that specifically affect women. Women and trans* identified people welcome to this day of workshops, keynote speakers, luncheon and more!