Bike Commuting for Beginners

Commuting is the thing that turns a bike from a weekend object into something you use. It is also where most first bikes quietly stop being ridden, usually for one of three reasons: arriving sweaty, arriving wet, or a route that was never realistic.

Each of those has a straightforward fix, and none of them requires a different bike.

Work out whether the route is realistic first

Do this before buying anything. Ride the route once on a weekend morning, at a deliberately easy pace, and note three things:

• Time, not distance. Forty-five minutes each way is the point most people stop sustaining a daily commute. Where you land is personal; the number to measure is minutes.
• The worst junction. Almost every route has one intersection that is genuinely unpleasant. Find it, then look for a way around it — a two-minute detour is worth it every single day.
• What the surface is like. Broken tarmac and drain grates decide what tire width you want, and whether a puncture-resistant tire earns its weight.

The sweat problem

The single biggest cause of arriving soaked is treating a commute as training. The second is a backpack: a pack sits against your back and stops it ventilating, so the one place that most needs airflow gets none.

In order of effectiveness, and all of them cheap:

1. Ride slower. Leave five minutes earlier.
2. Get the load off your back — a rack and panniers, or a frame or handlebar bag.
3. Keep a towel, deodorant and a spare shirt at the other end.
4. Wear less than feels right for the first five minutes. You warm up fast, and being slightly cold at the start is the correct amount of clothing.

The rain problem

Most of what makes you wet on a commute is not falling rain — it is spray thrown up off the road by your own wheels. That is what fenders exist for, and it is why a rider with fenders and no jacket often arrives drier than a rider with a jacket and no fenders.

SKS publish buying guidance for choosing fenders by frame and tire clearance, which is the check to do before ordering — many road frames have no mounting eyelets at all. Our fender page covers both the bolt-on and clip-on options.

The other half is drivetrain wear. A wet, gritty commute strips chain lube quickly, so a winter commuter wants a wet-weather lube and a wipe-down habit rather than the same routine as a summer road bike.

Riding in traffic, briefly

This is the part that worries new commuters most and the part that improves fastest with a few specific habits. The League of American Bicyclists publish the guidance; the headlines:

• Ride with traffic, never against it, and stay off the sidewalk.
• Stay out of the door zone beside parked cars — even where that means riding outside a painted bike lane.
• Ride in a straight line rather than weaving into gaps between parked cars.
• Take the lane where it is too narrow to share rather than inviting a pass that has nowhere to go.

The signals, the specific hazards and what the vehicle codes actually say are in our road rules guide.

Locking up, and the other end of the trip

Where you park decides your lock, not the value of your bike. Kryptonite publish guidance on matching lock rating to risk level, and the practical rules are short: lock through the frame to something immovable, put the lock where a thief cannot get a tool between it and the frame, and take anything quick-release with you. A U-lock is the usual answer for a bike left in public every day; Chain & Charge’s commuting roundup of the best U-locks goes further into shackle sizes and frame-mount brackets than we do here.

If the bike lives outside all day in a city, the honest answer may be to commute on a cheaper bike. Our storage and security guide covers registering the serial number, which is what actually gets bikes back.

What changes about the bike itself

• Tires get wider and tougher. Commuting is where puncture protection earns its weight, because a flat on the way to work costs more than a flat on a Sunday.
• Gearing gets easier, not harder. You are riding in normal clothes, possibly with a load, from a standing start at every light.
• Maintenance gets more regular. A bike ridden daily in all weather needs the chain looked after — a monthly ten minutes rather than an annual service.
• Nothing else. The bike you have is almost certainly the bike to start with.