Many of us are both motorists and cyclists.

From the perspective of a cycling motorist two main factors contribute to the difficulty of watching out for cyclists:
1. Many nighttime cyclists are not properly lit. This ranges from cyclists who completely lack lights, to cyclists who are poorly lit, to those who are well lit, but the lighting arrangement is visually confusing.
2. The behavior of many cyclists (night time or not) is often unpredictable from the perspective of a motorist, even this motorist who cycles (or this cyclist who motors).

At any rate, here are some tidbits to consider if you cycle at night:

-Cyclist fatalities occurred more frequently in urban areas (66%), at nonintersection locations (67%), between the hours of 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. (30%), and during the months of June, July, and August (36%). (NHTSA, 2004)
In 1999, 39% of deaths on bicycles nationwide occurred between 6 p.m. and midnight.

-Nearly 60 per cent of all adult fatal bicycle accidents in Florida occur during twilight and night hours although less than three percent of bicycle use takes place at that time.
Many factors compound the danger of riding at night, such as:
-Motorists driving under the influence of drugs/alcohol.
-Motorist’s ability to see what is ahead is limited to the area illuminated by headlights. Visibility is further reduced by the glare from lights of oncoming vehicles.

-The number of bicyclists killed at night has increased from 304 to 372 per year. In 1975, the number of nighttime deaths accounted for 30% of the total number of bicyclists killed. By 1982 (the latest year for which complete data are available), nighttime deaths accounted for 42% of the total number of bicyclists killed. One factor contributing to fatal nighttime bicyclist accidents is that the bicycles and riders are not readily visible to motorists. Motorists involved in car/bicycle collisions report that they hit bicyclists because the bicycles and riders were not visible. Cyclists’ failure to wear protective helmets may have also contributed to the severity of head injuries suffered in car-bike collisions.

1. If you cycle after dark, you may be sharing the road with motorists who are inebriated. Sorry, this fact is not negated if you are an inebriated cyclist.

2. If you are a bicycle commuter this time of year, you are riding in conditions that are stacked against you: The volume of automobiles is larger during commute hours, and it’s more difficult for drivers to see you. Add the glare caused by wet conditions and it’s even worse.

You probably usually cycle outdoors, but now that the days are shorter and the weather is not so good you are taking cycling classes and riding the bike indoors, can you still get a good workout that is comparable to normal outdoor cycling?

Answer: Staying active in the winter is vital to your health and essential if you want to maintain your fitness level.

No matter what your outdoor sport is, it is important to find an indoor alternative for when the weather is bad or the darkness gives you safety concerns.

Riding an indoor cycle is much better than not continuing your riding at all.

Much of your fitness gains will depend on where you are beginning.

Are you a beginner or advanced cyclist?

If you have spent many springs, summers and falls cycling and are conditioned to long runs, you will definitely want to keep up your activity during the winter so that you are not far behind where you left off in the coming season.

However, riding indoors and outdoors are very different things.

When you ride outdoors, you have many factors that influence and challenge your body.

The varying terrain and elevations cause your body to use everything it has to stay on the bike.

Your core (abs, back, glutes, and hips) are challenged to balance your body when you are moving in and out of traffic, dodging that pot hole or moving up a long graded hill.

When you are indoors your body is not challenged to such a great degree.

Sure you can increase the resistance to mimic the intensity found when hill climbing, but it is often not as intense as that seen outdoors.

The caloric expenditure is different when comparing indoor and outdoor riding.

When you ride outdoors on the road you can burn up to 720 calories per hour if you weigh at least 150 pounds and are riding 12 to 14 mph.

Most spinning classes include about 40 minutes of all-out cycling and they can burn close to 500 calories.

So the caloric burn is fairly close.

The intensity at which you ride and the terrain on which you ride on is very important in determining caloric expenditure.

Cycling on a recumbent bicycle at a more leisurely pace will burn somewhere around 400 to 500 calories in an hour. Again, the amount is highly influenced by the intensity at which you ride.

The same goes for running and cross-country skiing when comparing them to their indoor comparisons, the treadmill and a cross country machine.

Any time you can exercise your body outdoors, you are benefiting from many more elements, including varying terrain, elevation and your body can benefit from fresh air and nature.

Nicole Cooke is to lead a new all-British women’s cycling team that will combine assaults on the major races of the professional calendar with a focused preparation for the Olympics next summer in Beijing.

The right road: ‘It’s absolutely fantastic,’ said Nicole Cooke of the launch of an all-Britain women’s team

For the last few years the Welsh-born 24-year-old has been a dominant force in her sport, as the youngest-ever World Cup champion, as world No 1 and twice as the winner of the Grande Boucle, the women’s Tour de France. She won the gold medal in the road race at the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and followed up with a bronze in Manchester in 2006, despite an injury-interrupted preparation.

But Olympic success has been elusive. In Athens in 2004, Cooke could finish only fifth in the road race and 19th in the time trial. At that time, though, her preparation was compromised by the demands of racing for foreign-based professional teams, with an agenda often set by sponsors without Cooke’s Olympic interests in mind.

There was no injustice in that - they were her employers, after all. But the new, all-British team, with sponsors to be announced shortly, will be built around Cooke and, for the next year or so, will be directed with her Olympic ambitions as the number one priority.

“It’s absolutely fantastic,” Cooke said yesterday on a flying visit to London from her base in Switzerland. “This will be the first-ever British professional women’s team, and it’s the biggest step forward in the women’s sport in this country since I don’t know when.” The team will be guided by David Brailsford, the performance director of British cycling, who has brought such success to previous Olympic squads.
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Up to a dozen riders will compete for the team, which will tackle a programme of stage races and one-day events, always with an eye on Beijing and the world championships.

There was more good news for Cooke in a positive outcome to the keyhole surgery that she recently underwent to cure a painful knee injury. “The surgeon is very pleased with the outcome,” she said. “It feels as good as new.” The specialist has given her a DVD of the procedure, which was performed under a general anaesthetic, but Cooke will not be watching it. “No way, it would make me want to throw up. All I need to know is that it has worked.”

Cooke is now back in training on the mountainous roads around her home in Lugano. Today she will be riding for four or five hours: “Nothing too painful, just hard enough to do me good.”

Another young British sports star, Lewis Hamilton, attracted considerable flak when he announced his plans to relocate to Switzerland recently. Cooke expects no such attacks. Besides, her motives are entirely pragmatic. “Last year, I was racing for a Swiss-based team,” she explained. “And where I live is absolutely central for all the most important cycling events in Europe over the next couple of years.

“Women’s cycling is getting a lot more attention in Europe these days. We have gone from 24 professional squads to 41 in the last year, a massive increase. We would never have been able to put together a British women’s team five years ago.”

Part of the increased attention that the women’s sport is getting is a corollary to the dreadful goings-on in male cycling, in which every week brings a fresh drug exposure or confession and the premier event, the Tour de France, has lost any pretence of credibility.

“A huge amount of work is being done to restore credibility to men’s cycling, because sponsors and fans are demanding clean racing,” Cooke said. “We’re already there, we’re just standing there saying: ‘Hi, have a look at our sport.’

“Men’s cycling goes back so far that you have team managers who doped when they were riders, so it’s in the culture. They also have huge financial inducements, and we don’t have that.”

But is her sport entirely clean? “Let’s just say that the few rivals I’ve had suspicions about have been caught,” she said. “It’s annoying if they serve their bans during the off-season, or if their federations let them off lightly, but at least they are being caught. That’s the good news.”