Some of my most valuable lessons about biking safety have been learned as a driver, not at a biker. Here are two lessons learned:

The first happened on 123rd South in Draper, Utah before I got into triathlon. Draper is a very biker-friendly city in that there are wide shoulders and painted bike lanes all over the place. I was driving west on 123rd, right by the McDonald’s on 3rd East. I was preparing the turn right onto 3rd East, but the cars in front of me were going straight. So I pulled over into the bike lane so that I could pull forward and turn. However, there was a car that was too close to the bike lane and so my car couldn’t fit through. So as I waited for the light to turn green, I was sitting in the bike lane, blocking most of it. All of a sudden there was a bang on the side of my car, someone yelled “Bike lane!!!” and then two bikers road past my on the right, essentially riding in the gutter since I was blocking the whole bike lane.

Not only did I learn as a driver to not block the bike lane, but I realized that I hadn’t checked to see if any bikers were coming, and I could easily have pulled into that bike lane just as the bikers were coming along and I could have hit one or both of them or had them fly up the back of my car. Later, when I started biking, I remembered this incident and realized how ignorant drivers are of bike lanes and bikers in general. Just because you see the car, doesn’t mean the car sees you, especially if you’re behind the car.

A more recent incident happened near where I live. I was in my car ready to make a left turn onto Highland Ave. A car on Highland was approaching on my right so that they could make a left turn in front of me. As they started to slow down I looked behind them and saw that there were no cars behind them for a ways. I looked to the left and everything was clear. Since I already knew there were no cars behind the car preparing to make a turn in front of me, that meant that as soon as the car complete the turn, I could go. I was still looking to the left, and I turned my head only slightly to the right until the car came into view, and then I followed it as it turned left in front of me, and then I started to go. All of a sudden I realized there was a female biker in front of me, also turning left just like the car. I slammed on my brakes, soon enough to not hit her but not soon enough to avoid scaring her and forcing her to swerve. Where had she come from?!

I quickly realized that she had been behind the car that was turning. Not behind it as in right behind it, but on the right side of the car and a little ways behind. In other words, the entire time the car was approaching to make its turn, she was on the other side of it, and since the car was behind her and me, I couldn’t see her. But as the car turned she slowed down to come into the turn lane behind it. But I had already turned my head to the left and had “verified” nothing was behind the car turning in front of me. But there she was, and we’re both lucky it was nothing more than a mildly scary moment. The last thing I need is to hit a biker, and the last thing a biker needs is for me to hit them.

Once again, I learned two lessons. First, sometimes bikers hide behind cars, so I really, really need to make sure the coast is clear before I pull out. Second, if I’m a biker and I don’t have a clear view of a car, they probably haven’t noticed me at all.

In the first story I was completely at fault. The bikers weren’t even there when I pulled into that bike lane. In the second story it was a combination of errors on my part as well as that of the biker. But guess what? Who’s at fault only matters to the police and insurance companies. If you’re a biker and you get hit by a car, you lose whether you’re at fault or not. We can educate drivers all we want to, but if you’re going to be safe on your bike you have to assume drivers don’t have a clue, because most of them don’t. This generally holds true even if the driver happens to be a biker.

If you were getting on your teenager’s case about how he needs to do better with his homework and he said “Yeah, I know, but rest is important too, so I’m taking a week off” you’d haul his lazy behind out in the street and whoop on him until you had more neighbors around spectatin’ than you had out to your last block party, right? Of course you would. But when it comes to exercise, guess what? If you rest, that doesn’t mean you’re lazy, it means you’re smart. But don’t take my word for it, look at these other expert people (you can tell they’re experts because they have blogs) who say the same thing:

The Importance of Rest Days

The Importance of Rest

Importance of Rest

The last guy has pictures of musclely men and cats, so you know he’s serious when he says that rest is important.

But all kidding aside, resting is critically important to your training. Training is the act of working your muscles until they’re tearing and getting hurt. When you rest, they heal and more tissue fills in the tears and such, which makes your muscles bigger and stronger.

“But I rest every day” you say? Of course we all rest. Nobody is out there training 24 hours per day. But we’re talking about resting for several days at a time or taking an entire week off. Or, if you’re like me and have a pulled hamstring, taking multiple weeks off. Unfortunately for me, it’s the only way I can heal and get back to training.

I’m no expert on this stuff, but what I’ve seen and heard is that your body will generally tell you when you need a break. If you’ve been training 3-4 days per week for two months and you feel like you’ve hit a wall and your legs never feel properly rested then take a week off and just rest. Whenever I do this I find that once I start again that sure, it’s hard the first day, but by the second or third day I’m back into training I feel much better than when I started my rest period.

So if you’re new to triathlons and you think taking a break means you’re lazy, don’t sweat it, just take a break if you feel like you need one. Just don’t let that break turn into six months. That’s not called resting, that’s called quitting.