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cycling all things cycling anything on a bike and we welcome your questions on 086 625,000 because I’m joined by uh ran Harper who’s the chair of the tonell Gap Cycling Club they’re based in glenties and uh Ran’s been on the show a couple of times before so we just decided to well maybe during the summer months anyhow just to make it a sort of a semi-regular piece and and talk about cyclings because because because we both love cycling anyway Roland thanks for coming in thanks joh it’s good to see you again and I was just saying off here uh you’re actually in training you see you’re a you know you’re a dedicated cyclist you’re you’re in training now for the 555 which which is coming up when it’s the 10th of August uh 10th of August over what seven eight weeks away it’s not that far it’s creeping up very quickly on me night but you’re taking the the you’re taking it seriously I it a few years ago didn’t quite take it as serious as that now you’re putting in you know some decent miles I’m putting in decent training but it’s I just want to be the best that I can be on the day and whatever that is it is but as long as I leave it being the best that I can be I’ll be happy enough yeah um now when we’re we’re talking cycling on this spot um you know that’s the serious end just staying with this kind of serious end of cycling there’s a man who’s on a cycle today and I was checking this out um because he’s he’s Primal tracking and he left this morning from Malon head and he’s heading to mizen but you know a lot of people do that cycle that’s gr or the other way around but he’s turning around and miss and coming back this is Carol is it uh yeah yeah Carol and mcir and were you familiar with him you know what I’ve I’ve I’ve read about him during the week just um and it’s just it’s he’s urance C urance CCL so he’s doing the Malon to mizen to Malon so going the whole way down turning and come back up I think he’s doing it ons supported as well and he’s doing it to raise funds for the rnla for bondon he’s a crew member there correct yeah and hats off to him uh it’s ,25 kilm in total now you know he’s trying to break the record cuz in theory he can do it on support but you can stop wherever you like you know you can sleep whenever you like that’s up to you but if he’s out to break the record there’ll there’ll not be many I don’t think he’ll be stopping much and you know that event was held last year where you had the Maz de melon and there was a Maz de melon back down again uh so and not a lot of people fish that and it is a really really tough uh event so it’s tough to do it just one way yeah but never mind to turn and go back yeah fair play know you imagine head wck that that is on malis no I went to do it this year and it was cancelled uh early on in the year and that’s what ended up that’s why I end up doing the 555 CU I wanted something of similar distance and stuff but I’ll definitely do it at some stage I would love to be able to say I’ve done it because can you imagine the the head wreck that it is when you get to M having to turn around do it all over again the other way and apparently going up Ireland is tougher than going down it is it yeah just psychologically yeah yeah psychologically uh anyhow if anybody wants to check it out on Primal tracking and I before the show he was making uh making good Headway because he was uh he’s heading towards B beet at that fair play absolutely so a mcaren Ultra cycling team on Facebook if you want to check that out now the the first thing that has to be said Ronan is it’s not the greatest weather for cycling is it oh who you telling I was saying that earlier on today because my my cycling is one it seems to be very early mornings cuz I’m out in the bike for a long period of the day so I’m trying to get back at a decent time and I’m looking to go out now tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m. and I’m looking at the weather and it’s like 600 and 7 and 8° and I’m going with maybe wind and rain and maybe wind and rain and I was out last night and the rain was awful but like your Skin’s waterproof I guess so you just have to get out there and get on with it once you’re out for a while it’s fine but it isn’t great Wella it’s the cold I suppos we’re looking for that just that temperature increase with a little bit of sort of milder weather I guess yeah apart from I think maybe one week um last month there has there hasn’t been this year so far there there hasn’t been a nice not many I’ve had a couple which I’ve really enjoyed when you’re out in the sun and you’ve got the coastal around D which is beautiful but um yeah we’re hoping that hopefully it’ll pick up yeah hopefully yeah yeah better days ahead absolutely okay a question says just bought my four-year-old a balanc bike this is the the other end of the spectrum a balance bike so you a bike with stabilizers I’m guessing uh no no no balance bikes don’t have stabilizers they have no brakes and they have no stabilizers no pedals putting a four-year-old on a bike with no breaks well if you think about it a lot of other countries put them on at the age of two and it’s funny because that your listener sent in that because I’ve just gone down that route with my four-year-old and bought him a balance bike and they are fantastic so if your listeners are out there want to get their young kids into cycling I suppose where this originated with me John was we’ve done our U cycling skills course with all the kids in glenties and that’s been absolutely brilliant and you know as we ran that there was people of an older maybe six seven eight eight years of age that were on St stabilizers and in a way the stabilizers can kind of hold them back from that confidence thing at that age yeah yeah so if you look at a lot of other countries they will use the balance bik so they’re little small bike uh no pedals no brakes but the child will sit on the bike and they’ll use your their feet to to propel them forward and back and keep them balanced and my young gu’s called Sam he’s pretty adventurous but I got him a balance bik last week because he had an interest and want to sort of you know nurture that interest and he’s got the helmet he’s got the gear and he’s out running around our yard now freewheeling with the feet off so he’s got the balance within a week okay and that’s a great introduction to motor skills and being able to pedal on a bike at a much younger age so no pedals and no brakes and they’re using their feet and then you know they’ll push themselves off and free whe for a bit and then the go back down again it’s an alternative to stabilizers then it is and I I prefer it if I’m honest because I’ve seen such brilliant progress in a space of a few days where Sam is you know he’s propelling himself across the yard and then he’s lifting up the feet so he’s got that balance being able to know when the bike’s propelling forward that he doesn’t fall topple and fall over I think the challenge with stabilizer stabil bikes with stabilizers are there to encourage your bike to Pedal yeah and they can pedal fine to get and it is a challenge to get people you know kids used to Pedal in that circular motion but once you take the stabilizers off there have no concept of balance and balance is the probably the most important thing when you’re being propelled forward so I’ve looked at this before and I think Canada is a really sort of good country as an example where they would have their kids on balance bikes from the age of two and they would have them pedaling by the age of three so um and this is the first time I’ve done it with my kids I’ve got three kids uh and Sam’s the first one to use a balance bike and I’m standing back going wow his confidence his motor skills his coordination on a balance bik already so we’ll actually introduce him to a pedal bake you know in the next couple of months because he’ll already have the balances he been being propelled forward and it’ll be a pedal bake without stabilizer without stabilizers yeah so I I’m saying he’ll be by the end of the summer we should be putting him on a paddle bike without lasers and he should be able to do it okay well um I have three three girls and I’m just thinking back when I was teaching them because they’re all you know teenagers now and heading in the other direction and there was no no stab well we had had stabilized for the first because it was a bit bit weary so got stabilizers for the first and Granddad went off down to the market and just um got a got a bike and then separately got stabilizers and cobbled them together and and know she went and she Lu enough she picked up really quick then for the other two I think it was a different bike because that one had kind of been wrecked and a different bike and I’m just going to try this without stabil stabilizers couldn’t be bothered and luckily enough they they they took to it fairly quickly and you know you’re bit you’re a bit nervous when you put them on it’s and you’re thinking oh what’s going to happen here uh but you know the helmet was on anyhow and uh and it’s a great feeling when you see them taking off that first time and and they’re and they feel it as well the joy they feel just been unsupported yeah it’s watch I can definitely relate to that we’ve done this as part of our 8 weeks uh bike skills for kids and glanes the one we would have talked about before and you know some of the kids that we brought in first you know we were using it in that safe space in the car park remember we had that conversation some of them came with stabilizers they’re all off stabilizers now and now we have them out on the road supervised obviously but we have them cycling on on a road now and that that’s just brilliant to see just staying with the bikes and you know let’s talk about buying a bike for the first time whether you’re an adult or a child um you know children’s bikes was first of all what should you look out for if you’re if you’re buying a bike for for a child for for a kid I suppose the first thing is is probably size you know in terms of what they want to do and again do you want to go that balance bike route are they familiar with cycling or not is it the second bik is it the first bik can they can they use that and I would really encourage your listeners to sort of research the balance bite angle because I’ve seen the benefit of myself so size is the most important thing you know particularly kids they grow at an exponential rate so quite quickly they can be too big for the bike or the bike’s too small so that just makes it a bit more difficult for them and remember at that age it’s all about fun yeah so you put them off you don’t want to put them off cycling so there is a little bit that you get what you pay for so probably a little bit more expensive where you got proper Wheels proper pneumatic tires so some of these bikes have foam tires that maybe just aren’t really great for people starting off in terms of the the confidence angle so the that’s probably the most you can span on the bike is it is it is a better idea to give the people the confidence to to to ride in a in a better machine I guess and then as they as they get bigger maybe you’re introducing them to cycling as as they are a bit bigger it’s about size making sure that the the bike matches their size yeah like remember cycling has to be about fun so when you get on the bike you have to you want you really want to get on the bike so if you’re you know if your listeners around about buying a bike for themselves or for their K children it’s really what do they want to do with the bike do they want to go on the road where you have the old traditional Racers with the sort of curly handlebars do they want a mountain bike do they want something that’s in between like a hybrid bike and you know a lot of the good bike shops around L County and the North West would have you know people who are interested in bikes you know owning and running those bike shops so their best place to advise you on what what what is the right size and but size is really really important bill asked those questions you went what what what are you what do you want to use it for do you want to just go to the shops on a Sunday or do you want to cycle to work or do you want to join a club or do you want to go on the mountain bikes do you want to go Offroad you want to go onroad and then that’ll determine what sort of a bike whether it’s a mountain bike or a road bike or a hybrid in or hybri a hybrid is Sly exactly that it’s a it’s a it’s a a mix between a road bike and a mountain bike but probably more leaning towards the road bike angle it’s got the same type of wheel the same kind of gear setup it just won’t have the curly handlebars that you see in a road bike and you’ll not really be bent over you’re sitting more upright and you’ve got like mountain bike handlebars so they’re much more comfortable to ride with but it’s very handy if you if you s you go onto a trail you know you do a lot of cycling on the road Y and then some days you might just be on a trail and you don’t have to worry and you don’t have to and and and that is true like most of the hybrid of amus would be built for the road but you can get ones that you can take Offroad as well and that could be as simple as just changing the tires and having sort of puncture proof tires on there with a little bit of grip on your tires but then there’s uh what’s called dedicated trail bikes they’re different again rather than a hybrid aren’t they yeah yeah so like there there’s all these different variations you can go to gravel Bikes mountain bikes full suspension bikes sort of hard tail bikes so you can have suspensions on the back suspension on the front uh you can have the gravel bikes the gravel bikes is really taken off these days they’re a gravel bike that I meant yeah these are like a road bike like a a Risser for another word and uh they’ve got the nobbly tires but they’re thin tires and they’re built especially with the geometry far off far Trails not really downhill mountain bike and not going over rocks but like your sort of fire roads through forests and stuff like that those grally Trails cuz they have the grip on the tires and they’re built in a way that you know they can sustain the the unevenness of those roads yeah uh uneven but it’s not for like you know jumping over logs and you going around trees over Rock if you want to do that joh get yourself a full suspension mountain bike and you’ve got suspension on the front suspension on the back so whenever you do go over those jumps and you land you’ve got a nice question to land on that’s that’s right that’s right and wrong I don’t have any suspension on the I would say though very like if you if your listeners here are thinking to get it in the cycl and want to buy a bike for themselves like they must look at the bike to work scheme The Bike To Work scheme is a government run scheme where you can get tax relief on if you’re an employee you can get tax relief for the for the cost of the bike oh well there’s limits of the government set out so if you want to buy an ebike you can claim up to $1,500 per year uh on the bike to work scheme if it’s an ordinary bike it’s €1,250 in a in a fouryear period as well so it’s once every every four years those are the limits so for an ordinary bike is 1,250 for an ebik is 1500 and the way that it works John is that your employer would sign up it’s very easy for employers to sign up they will pay for the bike and most employers then will deduct that from your wages every 12 every like every month for 12 months but the most important thing is that you get top rate tax relief from the bike so I’ll give you some numbers go ahead okay so what the limit on a traditional bike is at 1,250 let’s just say someone want to buy a really good bike at a th000 ,000 right and let’s just say they’re a top rate taxpayer that bike is going to cost them $490 net so you’re really getting a,o bike for $490 if you go through the bike to work if you’re not a top rate taxpayer and you’re just a standard rate taxpayer it’s still only going to cost you €90 net so you can get a ,000 valued bike through the bikey work same for € 690 or $490 and most employers will let you pay for that as a deduction from your salary over a 12- Monon period and it doesn’t stop there because not only can you buy bikes you can get bike accessories so some of your listeners may be sitting there and saying I already have a bike but I don’t have the helmet I don’t have the lock I don’t have the mud guards I don’t have the other apparatus that I want for the B maybe I need to put new wheels on it maybe I want to put the gravel wheels on it you can use it for accessories as well so it’s again once every four years you can use those thresholds okay and and just they have to be bought through an approved dealer an approved dealer and it has to be a new bike you can’t buy a secondhand bike so if you go into any reputable bike job they’ll be able to talk your listeners through how that works as well but that’s the bones of it so if if your listeners are going to buy a new bike and they are an employee definitely check out the bike to work they can get great information on the citizens information. website on that stuff as well uh what advice for all the cyclists that decide not to use cyc l where cyc L are provide that’s contensous you mention bikes it always comes up cyclist said too it’s well you know what it’s a bit like drivers who don’t do the right thing on the roads there’s plenty of cyclists who don’t do it as well yeah and uh it is it is and I don’t know what the right answer in this is but like for example I’ve been out in the bike for the last week I’ve been out most days in the bikes and I’ve been sort of honked by a couple of uh drivers right um and that’s where this you cycling alongside I’m I’m cycling on the left hand side of the road so like for me are you cycling on the road where where there is a c where there is a cycl in and the problem I have on that as suppose is that on the cycle Lane there are lots of Junctions on the cycan there’s a lot of gravel where those Junctions are and I’ve got a road bike so I don’t want to get punctures some of those cycle Lanes aren’t swept they’re brilliant we’ve got a brilliant one in glanes to un low there as you know but they’re not really conducive to the speeds that I’ll be doing on the bike because I’m on a road bike and I can do I can be doing 50 km an hour while I’m on the road bike now the thing is that when I’m on the road I’m legal on the road I have a cycing airand insurance I’m insured to be on the road and yeah you know I would love to be able to use the cycle path if it was flat and if there was no Junctions on it and if there was no walkers on it because if I’m going up behind a walker and I’m doing that speed you know it it it might frighten them and stuff so I think that the lesson here is that everybody just needs to be curious and everybody can use their like the rules of the road says the cyclist can use the road as well as the mountain bikes the cars can use that main road or they can go a different Road as well that’s what sometimes the way I look at it you know there’s all these different roads that they can use as well so it’s it’s it’s hard to W that argument no matter what side you’re on but I think it’s just come back to being everybody needs to respect each other and give each other and you outline it there that you know a cycle anes aren’t for every cyclist and that you you’re out there with a road bike and they’re uh there’s often gravel on these Trails there’s also of a lot of Walkers uh slow moving cyclist and you’re out there bombing on the road so really it’s you need to be on the road can’t be on the cyle driv just you know need to appreciate that but but you’re right you know for the other casual cyclist maybe the cyc lanes are brilliant and like when we’re on the mountain bikes we use the cyc lanes all the time cuz the mountain bike can handle that better because it’s not getting punctured it’s got the nobly tires it doesn’t matter if there’s a b of gravel on the roads and we’re not going that fast so I think you know um yeah it’s a it’s a hard one to to debate I guess um I have a 15-year-old child who’s mildly autistic I I think said he’s outgrown the balance bike have you got any tips for him to get back on the bike on a bike I would imagine yeah so I don’t know where that listeners from but you know we have the cycling skills program where we have all different uh people from different backgrounds that have come to do that there there are different types of bikes I guess if they’ve I think he said they’re on a balanced bike so they could maybe you know try them on a stabilizer bike but I think he said they were 15 so you’re probably not going to get a bike that that size um there are other modes of bikes uh you know it’s funny uh one of our other club members has got a track bike it’s called recumbent where you can actually sit on it where it’s got three wheels so you’re not really worrying about the balance but you can still you can actually sit in the seat and you pedal you know there’s ones that are lower to the ground one of them out Glen V now yeah yeah so so those are a good option if they want to get their child out and it’s still cycling it’s still on a different type of bike um so that that’s a good option and those things those things are good and I’ve I’ve tested one and they’re they’re quite fun and uh finally I got a bike from my son a little bit big bikes their Nish company it’s a Balan bike with brakes and pedals yeah added later sorry uh as the child grows absolutely fantastic he’s cycling at four years old now on his own there you go isn’t that class yeah that’s class one of the things I found with just kids with the traditional bikes with you know with the stabilizers is they find it hard to work the brakes and stuff like that as well so it’s good to get them on the balance bike sort of control and the speed with their feet uh very briefly times against us is there a couple of upcoming events uh a challenge coming up on the sixth of next month in the broa area there is I think that might be for their members only the one in in brona so they can check out their website H for that one but there is loads coming up in the Northwest over the next few months like I think for your listeners the best place to look there is to go onto the cycl Ireland website and if you go on to the event section there you can see all the events in whatever you can filter it by County by Leisure by sportive and you can see all the different events that are coming up there in the in in any County so you can Define it the county Don or oler whatever celand cycling Ireland website shows you all the official events that are there yeah okay anybody wants to listen back to this piece it would be onor socials and on uh and on YouTube and we’ll hopefully do it again soon maybe in a few weeks time thank you thank you John and the best luck with all the training thanks get with the best Virgin Media Ireland’s best Broadband with full fiber and speeds of 2 gig is now available in Dy check your area on Virgin media. it’s playtime Virgin Media sponsors of around the Northwest charge Into Summer with Tui choose from a beach Cruise or city break or Mexico flying direct from Dublin holiday sorted Tu we live happy connect hearing is open for free hearing tests our audiologist is available Monday to Friday for wax removal services at our L keny clinic in the courtyard shopping center we also offer a home visit for those who arable to visit us our hearing is our social sense are you finding hearing more of a challenge call Ura today on 074 911 13296 to make an appointment good hearing helps us to connect to our family friends and loved ones connect 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