I have been wanting to write a bike safety post for months, but there is so much to talk about with respect to bike safety, that I could not get a post of readable length together. Fortunately, someone has already done it for me. This post comes as close as anything to how I feel about family cycling.

Then there is the pregnancy. Do I recommend cycling while pregnant? Heck yes! (Assuming that your ob/gyn approves it, which mine did). When I got pregnant with Trev, I soon stopped biking and going to the gym. I was simply too tired to do any of it. I stopped biking even before I realised I was pregnant because I just could not huff it in the athletic way I did before kids. I did prenatal yoga, which is better than nothing, but half a year of very little physical activity made it very difficult for me to recover form giving birth and thanking care of an infant. It took me a year or longer to regain any energy whatsoever. For those not in the know, a year without having energy to do all that you need to get done sucks.

With Owen I was prepared so I kept cycling in the summer and took spinning courses in the fall. By now I knew how to exercise while pregnant so I took that into the account. The endurance I’ve built up in spinning got me through the birth without drugs and I bounced back much, much sooner than the first time. So far, in this pregnancy, cycling has made me stay physically fit. This was particularly important since my hips readjusted very early (around 4 months) making it quite uncomfortable to walk (I’ve been wobbling for more than half the pregnancy). If I don’t cycle for several days I get sore, the muscles in my legs seize up during the night and I am generally grumpy. The weeks this summer when I was recovering from stomach flu or when it was too hot and humid to go outside or when my bike was broken were the worst this summer.

Are there risks? Sure, but like any other activity, you balance them out with the benefits. Car accidents are one of the leading cause of accidental deaths for children yet we still strap our little ones into the car several times a day every day. I’ve yet to meet someone who chooses to not drive for the fear of death and if I did I would think that they suffer from paranoia rather than making a rational decision. It is the same with biking. Like with the car, you make sure that your bike is in good working order and you ride in a way that you believe is safe. With biking the question really comes down to what you believe is safe and what you feel comfortable with.

With this in mind I took the CAN-bike course this weekend. The first section of the course consisted of theoretical part, then we did some drills and finally we went out on the road. We drove a bit around Centrepointe area and then hit Woodroffe, Medowlands and Hunt Club. We stopped biking about an hour earlier than scheduled because both Charissa and I were tired. This, I believe, had mostly to do with our bikes not being suited for long rides. According to the instructor’s bike computer we did about 18km, but she didn’t do the drills so I think Charissa and I must have done at least 20km if not more which is usually the limit of what I can do on my utility bike. We did all of the tasks except merging over four lanes of busy traffic to turn left, mostly because our bikes are too slow and we were getting tired. Frankly, I have no intention of merging over four lanes of traffic at this point in my life so no skin off of my nose. At least I know in theory how to do it.

Was it worth taking the course? I didn’t learn a lot of new things, which was in line with my expectations. I did learn a couple of new things and I corrected some minor impressions. Overall, I took the course to ensure that I am aware of “best practices” and to make sure I am as aware as I think I am of safety issues. In that sense the course delivered what I expected so it was worth it for me. Would I recommend it for others? If you think that you would learn from it, than it is probably worth it. I will definitely insist that our kids take the children’s version of the course once they are old enough and I would definitely recommend it for other people’s kids (because I am nosy that way…).