I have my first observed ride/assessment on Sunday

I had my free trial observation ride the other day with an IAM assessor, very enjoyable, and I've took the plunge and signed up for the Skills for Life program.

I ride 'very well, but there are several areas where we can really help you to improve and get the most out of your riding, and your bike'

I ride pigeon toed, so I've got to make myself ride on the balls of my feet, which I found uncomfortable the other day as my legs are stiff, and my knees are crap, but it'll get easier I suppose.

I need to straight line roundabouts instead of swooping round the curves on them, and I need to use my mirrors more. - I can check both my mirrors without moving my head, but that obviously isn't visible to an observer, so I'll have to keep my head moving for his benefit!

He wanted me to be a bit more extreme in my positioning for bends - I was using a fair bit of the road, but he wants me to use more, which will open up the road ahead for me even more.

Like many riders new to the 'advanced' world, I'd say my main areas for improvement are observation and planning - I'm looking forward to getting out again with him soon!

This all sounds very familiar except for the pigeon feet bit :beerjug:
 
Where the fuck in the book does it say you can't ride pigeon toed :blast

Are you comfortable? Can you fully control the brake and gear-lever? Tell him to feck off :rob

Micky ... 24 years IAM Examiner
 
Where the fuck in the book does it say you can't ride pigeon toed :blast

Are you comfortable? Can you fully control the brake and gear-lever? Tell him to feck off :rob

Micky ... 24 years IAM Examiner

I'll screen shot this page and show him Micky!

I feel completely comfortable riding how I was before. The guy I'm doing my training with is another assessor, so I'll ask him about it.
 
I expect the guy is going by the book. Page 18 of How to be a better rider mentions keeping the balls of your feet on the rests etc. But Micky is right, it's a matter of common sense. As long as you are comfortable and in control.
 
Where the fuck in the book does it say you can't ride pigeon toed :blast

Are you comfortable? Can you fully control the brake and gear-lever? Tell him to feck off :rob

Micky ... 24 years IAM Examiner
I would imagine the OP's observer is a member of the IAM pipe & slipper brigade and reads the "book" just for fun .

Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk
 
I would imagine the OP's observer is a member of the IAM pipe & slipper brigade and reads the "book" just for fun .

Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

Not really to be fair, he was a nice guy, took the piss out of another bloke he saw in the little chef we sat in for a coffee who had an 'Observer' patch on his super shiny hi viz. My guy doesn't wear hi viz, and didn't have a white flip front helmet!
 
I had a check ride with the area COB with good positive feedback and i'll be putting in for my test tomorrow and see what date comes back. One thing we did discuss and maybe some of the more experienced riders here can help is how to recognise the speed limit on a road when you see no signs?
 
I had a check ride with the area COB with good positive feedback and i'll be putting in for my test tomorrow and see what date comes back. One thing we did discuss and maybe some of the more experienced riders here can help is how to recognise the speed limit on a road when you see no signs?

Lampost spacings & speed limit signs on entrance to side roads can help. And remembering what the last speed limit sign was:D
 
Never ever ridden with the balls of my feet on the pegs ... use the instep, that's what it's there for :rob

:beerjug:
 
I had my free trial observation ...., and I need to use my mirrors more. - I can check both my mirrors without moving my head, but that obviously isn't visible to an observer, so I'll have to keep my head moving for his benefit!!..........


Here at Rapid, we give the students a written report. It's nobody on here, but worthy of a read, and worthy of getting your observer to read!!

:beerjug:


In this section ******, we try and give the students a couple of things to think about so that they can go away with something to work on.
For you I’m going to choose your system, and an old favourite that rears its head time and time again with the RoSPA / IAM groups, which was the ‘Animal’ the muppet show drummer idea on the radio!! (too much looking).
Lets look at that first.
In my opinion, any observer / instructor / examiner worth his salt, will know what you’re thinking as you ride. And he’ll know that by a whole load of tell tale signs in your riding. That might be your pace, your positioning, your body language, taking a gear ... every thing. If you’ve whistled past a blind junction that you clearly haven't seen, I’ll know! If you subtly delay a bit of positioning for say a right hand bend, because there’s a nearside junction on the approach, and you (correctly) choose to wait just a second or two before getting nearside .... I’ll see that. When you knock of your speed by just 5 mph as you go into that ‘road narrows’ sticky section, I’ll feel that in my gas too, and I’ll know what you're thinking.
And if you as a rider, are seeing those hazards, and if you’re computing what to do with them hundreds of yards away (as you should be!), your riding will be good. It’ll have ‘long vision’, it’ll appear ‘lazy’ (in a good way), it’ll be that swan on the water that is graceful and elegant, and it’ll be that way because your long vision is buying you TIME.
Now then! I completely understand the dilemma of observer / student, where observer says “show me you’ve seen the hazard’, so student rides down the road inanely staring into empty junctions, looking into empty roundabouts five times, doing lifesavers past parked vehicles as he passes them and so on. And of course that is compounded when observer says - ‘I’ll do a demonstration ride - follow me’ and he then too, drives down the road staring into empty junctions, and generally hamming up all the hazards as he passes them so that his student ‘learns’.
I understand why it happens.
But it’s a disaster!!! And it’s such a bad thing, because it ironically promotes the very thing we don’t want - SHORT vision. The very essence of good biking is probably 90% to do with observation and planning. And generally speaking, the further away that is, the better. If our attention is living amongst the parked cars as we’re passing them, the roundabout that we’re actually already on, the junction that we’re immediately passing, then our attention is not hundreds of yards up the road where it should be.
If our attention is hundreds of yards up the road, then it’ll deal with all those parked cars and side roads and hazards when it sees them - hundreds of yards away. Yes, I completely accept that you will get some hazards where you can only deal with them when you’re on top of them, (plenty of roundabouts will give you a very late view into their junctions), but for the most part, we can and should deal with stuff way way before we get there.
This is endemic in RoSPA and IAM!! So you are by no means unusual for doing it.
I hope, I’d like to think, that as our day progressed, and we started to knock that out of you, you can see how suddenly your planning, positioning, acceleration
sense ... everything improved, simply because you were now pitching your brain hundreds of yards away. Good!
Bin the Janet and John ‘look into the side roads’ thing and everything that goes with that like the life savers and the check, check and check again. (unless of course you do actually need to!).
 
Never ever ridden with the balls of my feet on the pegs ... use the instep, that's what it's there for :rob

:beerjug:


Ha ha ..... I ride on the balls of my feet ......

:beerjug:


(which folks, goes to show .... that there are a thousand shades of grey, that no two riders are the same, and that if you embark on training, be a sponge .... take all the good bits you see and like in other riders, bin the bits you don't like in other riders and be happy to have your own style. If Micky and I rode together I have no doubt we'd probably be doing and thinking almost exactly the same thing, but you would still see different styles in us ... ).
 
Here at Rapid, we give the students a written report. It's nobody on here, but worthy of a read, and worthy of getting your observer to read!!

:beerjug:


In this section ******, we try and give the students a couple of things to think about so that they can go away with something to work on.
For you I’m going to choose your system, and an old favourite that rears its head time and time again with the RoSPA / IAM groups, which was the ‘Animal’ the muppet show drummer idea on the radio!! (too much looking).
Lets look at that first.
In my opinion, any observer / instructor / examiner worth his salt, will know what you’re thinking as you ride. And he’ll know that by a whole load of tell tale signs in your riding. That might be your pace, your positioning, your body language, taking a gear ... every thing. If you’ve whistled past a blind junction that you clearly haven't seen, I’ll know! If you subtly delay a bit of positioning for say a right hand bend, because there’s a nearside junction on the approach, and you (correctly) choose to wait just a second or two before getting nearside .... I’ll see that. When you knock of your speed by just 5 mph as you go into that ‘road narrows’ sticky section, I’ll feel that in my gas too, and I’ll know what you're thinking.
And if you as a rider, are seeing those hazards, and if you’re computing what to do with them hundreds of yards away (as you should be!), your riding will be good. It’ll have ‘long vision’, it’ll appear ‘lazy’ (in a good way), it’ll be that swan on the water that is graceful and elegant, and it’ll be that way because your long vision is buying you TIME.
Now then! I completely understand the dilemma of observer / student, where observer says “show me you’ve seen the hazard’, so student rides down the road inanely staring into empty junctions, looking into empty roundabouts five times, doing lifesavers past parked vehicles as he passes them and so on. And of course that is compounded when observer says - ‘I’ll do a demonstration ride - follow me’ and he then too, drives down the road staring into empty junctions, and generally hamming up all the hazards as he passes them so that his student ‘learns’.
I understand why it happens.
But it’s a disaster!!! And it’s such a bad thing, because it ironically promotes the very thing we don’t want - SHORT vision. The very essence of good biking is probably 90% to do with observation and planning. And generally speaking, the further away that is, the better. If our attention is living amongst the parked cars as we’re passing them, the roundabout that we’re actually already on, the junction that we’re immediately passing, then our attention is not hundreds of yards up the road where it should be.
If our attention is hundreds of yards up the road, then it’ll deal with all those parked cars and side roads and hazards when it sees them - hundreds of yards away. Yes, I completely accept that you will get some hazards where you can only deal with them when you’re on top of them, (plenty of roundabouts will give you a very late view into their junctions), but for the most part, we can and should deal with stuff way way before we get there.
This is endemic in RoSPA and IAM!! So you are by no means unusual for doing it.
I hope, I’d like to think, that as our day progressed, and we started to knock that out of you, you can see how suddenly your planning, positioning, acceleration
sense ... everything improved, simply because you were now pitching your brain hundreds of yards away. Good!
Bin the Janet and John ‘look into the side roads’ thing and everything that goes with that like the life savers and the check, check and check again. (unless of course you do actually need to!).

That makes total sense to me.A great deal of what you said there reflected exactly how I felt when I did my free observation.
He took me on a road I knew like the back of my hand which was a shame, I didn't feel he noticed at all that I was aware of the hazards on that road and had taken action to keep me safe. I'm not in any way saying I was perfect, but I didn't feel he knew what I was actually seeing
and adjusting for.I also didn't like having to brake into bends (to show a brake light) when I didn't need to.I came away slightly disappointed
with the whole thing.
It's a shame your so far away,sounds like someone could learn a great deal with you and your colleagues.:thumb
 
He told me not to use the gearbox to slow down, but to use the brakes, he justified this by saying showing a brake light tells a following vehicle that i'm slowing down. He also said brakes were cheaper than gearboxes. This seemed totally alian to me,but assumed this is the way they teach today.:nenau
 
Johno .... (For the benefit of your vivid imagination ..) I'm in the bath right now but feel that your comment is worthy of yet more war and peace !! Which I'm happy to do tomorrow .... !!
 
Johno .... (For the benefit of your vivid imagination ..) I'm in the bath right now but feel that your comment is worthy of yet more war and peace !! Which I'm happy to do tomorrow .... !!

Cheers, I would be interested in your comments.As I said I left disappointed and decided it wasn't for me really, which is a shame.

Enjoy your bath...:)
 
He told me not to use the gearbox to slow down, but to use the brakes, he justified this by saying showing a brake light tells a following vehicle that i'm slowing down. He also said brakes were cheaper than gearboxes. This seemed totally alian to me,but assumed this is the way they teach today.:nenau

That's really strange - every advanced rider I've ever spoken to has advocated flexible gears and engine braking to control speed - I've always tried to keep brake usage to an absolute minimum. I even got a gentle chiding from my Plod observer on my bikesafe ride for doing a 'comfort dab' on the back brake as I went into a left hander slightly too quick for my liking!
 


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