New bike is too easy to pedal - something not right?

Have you tried toe'in your brake pads? this helped my old bike many moons ago.

If you've got a smartphone, download one of the cycling apps (Strava, Cyclemeter, etc) that can record your ride. Then see what average speed you're doing. If you're not breaking a sweat, you may not be going very fast...

Any bike (even one with easy gearing) can get you fit. You'll just have to pedal faster. It's the legs spinning round that gets the heartrate up. Harder gears just helps with building your thigh muscles.

Don't worry about it! If the bike is enjoyable to ride you're much more likely to do so, and your fitness will improve over time. This style of bike is designed to be fairly easy to ride - it isn't built for speed but for comfort and practicality. Arriving at your destination hot and sweaty is something that puts many people off cycling, so enjoy it and use it as much as you can. You could put a pannier rack on the bike and use it for shopping trips as well as commuting.


Congratulations on making a great change. :-)

Marco_Panettone wrote: »

Don't worry about it! If the bike is enjoyable to ride you're much more likely to do so, and your fitness will improve over time. This style of bike is designed to be fairly easy to ride - it isn't built for speed but for comfort and practicality. Arriving at your destination hot and sweaty is something that puts many people off cycling, so enjoy it and use it as much as you can. You could put a pannier rack on the bike and use it for shopping trips as well as commuting.


Congratulations on making a great change. :-)

I agree with the sentiment in this post; it doesn't always have to be about performance.

What was Chris Boardman saying the other day at the end of the London Bike event,something along the lines that his passion is to promote cycling as just another form of transport, albeit a bloody good one. Some thing that can be done in ordinary clothing by ordinary people. I paraphrase.

Edit:
I found copied down what he said on the channel4 cycle show programme (19thAug2014) :

"If I have a soapbox, this is it"

"It's just a bloody good tool for getting around, for normal people, in normal clothes doing normal things"

"First and foremost transport, after that to explore, after that to race, all those things are great, but for me first and foremost I'd just like to see it as a transport tool."

Ebe_Scrooge wrote: »

If you fill the panniers with half a hundredweight of house bricks, that'll make it harder to pedal

Sort of. A fully-laden bike is harder to start moving and harder to get up hills, but once going on the flat the weight makes very little difference (although cornering gets 'interesting' if the weight shifts, or is unbalanced). It's one of the many beauties of the machine.