Pillar III: Ride with Competence

Pillar III: Ride with Competence

The first two pillars of Cycle Life Cycle set the foundation. Cycling Is Bigger Than Racing reminds us that our sport is much bigger than competition and performance alone. Ride Hard, Live Easy challenges us to put effort in the right places, without letting cycling compete with the rest of our lives.

But neither of those ideas works without something more practical underneath them. Something quieter. Something that shows up not in ambition, but in execution.

The cycling world often equates confidence with speed, bravado, or loud opinions, but competence is something far more powerful. It doesn’t show up in your Strava numbers or the size of your chainring. It appears in your bike. It appears in how you ride. It appears in how you respond when a ride when things stop going perfectly.

At Cycle Life Cycle, Ride with Competence is the belief that knowing what you’re doing, on the bike and with the bike, is what turns cycling from something stressful into something deeply satisfying.

After fifteen years in a bike shop and tens of thousands of miles leading group rides, I’ve learned that most of the frustration people feel on bikes has less to do with fitness and more to do with not quite knowing how to handle the machine beneath them, or the situations they find themselves in. That gap between wanting to ride and knowing how to ride is where confidence gets shaky.

What competence actually looks like

A competent rider doesn’t have to be fast or ride the longest distance. Competent riders are smooth, they are intentional and they don’t panic when things change.

A competent rider knows how to hold a line in a group instead of drifting into traffic when someone comes close. They corner without slamming the brakes or unclipping their shoes and then sprinting back on. They take a pull at the front without blowing themselves up. They understand where to sit in the draft and how to move through a pack without causing chaos. A competent rider understands and knows how to care for their equipment.  And when the ride throws something unexpected at them (as they often do) a chain drop, a flat tire, a weird noise, they don’t freeze.

They respond.

That response doesn’t require being a master mechanic, having elite level fitness, or pro handling skills. That response, however, does require a good understanding the basics: how to shift smoothly, how to brake with intention, how to corner with confidence. It’s knowing how much air to put in your tires, how to clean and lube your drivetrain, how to put a chain back on, and how to fix a flat without turning it into a crisis.

Those small competencies add up to something big: Freedom.

The hidden cost of not knowing

I see the same patterns over and over…and they show up in riders at all fitness levels.

Some wander across the road because they don’t trust their handling.
Some surge off the front and then fade off the back because they don’t know how to pace.
Some panic-brake into every corner.
Some are the strongest of the A-group… but their bike sounds like a bowl of Rice Krispies and they can’t change a tire when it matters.

I’ve watched riders with plenty of fitness unravel because something simple went wrong. A dropped chain turns into panic. A flat tire ends the ride. A strange noise becomes all they can think about for the next two hours.

Mechanically or mentally, the result is the same: stress.

Every ride becomes a series of little emergencies. Every sound is a threat. Every corner is a gamble. You might look confident from the outside, but inside, you’re just hoping nothing goes wrong.

That’s the difference between false confidence and real confidence.

Competence creates true confidence

You can be bold without being competent.
You can ride aggressively without being skilled.
You can look confident while quietly being terrified of everything going wrong.

But competence changes how a ride feels.

When you know how to corner, corners stop feeling like tests.
When you know how to fix your bike, noises lose their power.
When you know how to pace, the front of the group stops being intimidating.
When you know how to ride close to others, the group itself becomes comfortable.

That’s where real confidence comes from — not from pretending you belong, but from knowing you can handle what the ride throws at you.

A practice, not a destination

Ride with Competence isn’t about reaching some final level where you’re “done.” Skills grow over time. I’m still improving mine. Everyone is.

What matters is the mindset: you are responsible for your own riding.

That responsibility isn’t heavy, it’s empowering. It means choosing to learn. Asking questions. Practicing small skills. Getting better at the things that make riding safer, smoother, and more enjoyable.

It’s not about chasing mastery. It’s about staying curious.

From participant to leader

Something else happens as riders become more competent: their role in the community changes.

They become steadier in the group.
They make rides safer without saying a word.
They help others when something goes wrong.

Competent riders don’t just get through the ride, they elevate it. They’re the ones newer riders learn from without even realizing it. The ones who make cycling feel welcoming instead of intimidating.

And that matters, because cycling is bigger than racing — and riding hard only works when life is easy enough to enjoy it. Competence allows you to relax into a ride, to stop scanning for problems, and bracing for the worst.

Competence turns fear into confidence, stress into freedom, and a bike ride into something you can truly enjoy, even when things don’t go perfectly.