The upcoming cool mornings are made for bicycle commuting. They carry the association for me that school is starting. It turns out that I have gone back to bicycling school myself. Yes! Here I am, an experienced cyclist with eight years plus of year-around commuting to work, familiar with the finer points of sharing the road, but I had become complacent and inattentive!

My wakeup moment came because a friend asked me to help her get into cycling so that she "could lose weight." I suppose it is possible to lose weight by cycling, but I suspect she would have to quit work and cycle forty or fifty intense hours a week to do so. I encouraged her, nevertheless, because even if we pudgy people do not transform ourselves into lean greyhounds, we can really increase our fitness and cardiovascular health even with moderate, regular cycling.

When I decided to pick up a few well-informed clues for my friend, I landed myself squarely into learning mode - not even re-learning mode. How shocking! I turned to a book that I have had for several years, Richard's Cycling for Fitness, by John Schubert (Ballantine Books, New York, 1988). Schubert starts with the basics of learning to ride gracefully. Here I am, eight years into regular, year-around commuting and I realized I'm not riding all that gracefully, nor consistently. Now I have a fresh start that may boost me to another level of cycling competency. Three components of graceful riding are to spin while pedaling (not pushing them), to maintain a consistent high-speed cadence (which I've never achieved), and to learn how to handle the bicycle with fine control whether going straight or turning corners (right away I read about ways to improve my bicycle control).

I decided to start with one skill: spinning the pedals. According to Schubert, the cyclist who spins maintains momentum while using energy effectively, conserving strength, going faster and arriving refreshed. Guess what? It's true!

Armed with my determination to concentrate on spinning, I set out. Every time my pedals needed even a little more push, I would shift down - either cog or chain ring. When the pressure eased, even a little bit, I would shift up again. And the results? My overall time was 5 minutes faster: a 25% improvement. My speed moved from its usual 12.5 mph to 13.6 mph. Was I refreshed? Yes, and pumped up because of this amazing, yet simple practice of a basic bicycling skill. It will take me some time to internalize the spinning techniques, but I'm on my way.

Schubert points out that as you keep yourself in higher gears (more push) you draw on glycogen reserves and load your muscles with lactic acid. When the glycogen is gone, you're done. When you spin, using the whole rear freewheel cassette, you use the "abundant" energy sources: triglycerides and fatty acids, and have a reserve. He also describes the loss of momentum on barely visual inclines without downshifting. It matched my experience. Attention to pedal pressure is the key to effective spinning. He also points out that each down shift on the cassette (toward the larger cogwheels) gives a 15% boost of power, and that the "front shifter" between your three or two chain rings gives a 20% boost in power. Now, if I start to shift past the middle cogs, I drop a chain ring first and do at least one click into a smaller cog and spin, spin, spin.

My goal for Spinning 101 is to train myself to be intuitively sensitive to the slightest changes in pressure as I spin and not to be too proud to use the granny gear. I still feel embarrassed to click into it, but hey! At age 66, I qualify, and the results in speed, time, and energy look like they will pay off. As I become more instinctively able to maintain consistent spin, can cadence be far behind? Are you an old hand at these basic bicycle driving skills, or do you need to go back to school too?

There are lots of "schools" for improving cycling skills, and September is only one great month to enroll yourself. The Effective Cycling courses offered by the Atlanta Bicycle Campaign are outstanding. I am a graduate. Group rides are wonderful "schools." I've never done a group ride without picking up helpful hints from the other riders. Long rides are their own schools and skill builders. Then there are books. Why did I leave that delightfully written book by Schubert on the shelf so long? Whatever works for you, remember that your cycling can be even more enjoyable as you review the state of your skills and hone them for happier year-around commuting.