R4F (Riding for Focus)

Good morning! You all look a little chilly. Sometimes you've got to just get on the bike and go. Today was one of those days. It was cool out and wispy mist hung over the athletic fields. After moving the bikes outside and setting them in the corral, the kids jumped right on their ABCQuick checks. They lit up the LEDs on their helmets, and waited for me to finish taking attendance.  Today's plan: Warm up. Ride. Reinforce skills covered (shifting, weaving, cadence, starting and stopping). Cool down. One of my 7th graders took me under his wing to try and teach me how to bunny hop. I could almost do it! At the end of the ride I offered a more challenging alternative for kids to get back to school. There is a root-strewn, technical trail that leads back to the fields. A brave few rode the whole thing, but most had to walk at least part of the trail. They were so psyched to have the chance to let loose for a brief moment. This is a perfect example of the FO

The Riding For Focus crew enjoyed another morning of unseasonably warm weather today. We began by taking a resting pulse rate before riding.   Most kids had no trouble finding the pulse at their carotid artery, but we showed them their radial pulse as well. Calculating heart rates is a great way to embed mental math into our riding sessions. Count your pulse for fifteen seconds, double the result and then double it again. That number is your heartbeats per minute (BPM).  I asked kids to remember this number so we could compare it to another reading after riding for a bit.  As we headed toward the dirt roads of Oak Grove Cemetery, the adults watched the kids ride and reminded them how to shift, what cadence to maintain, and how to start and stop while in control. The exit from the fields is a steep, unpaved dirt path, and many kids took on the challenge of this short climb successfully. I only heard a few cringe-worthy gear grindings as a couple of kids tried to shift in the midd

The mornings have been cool and crisp as we kicked off Riding For Focus this week. Fall is in the air, and we have twenty-one rosy cheeked middle schoolers eagerly hauling their bikes "hand over hand" from the storage area to the bike corral each morning.  They are motivated to get out riding as quickly as possible, so they manage to be focused and efficient, even at 7:00 am. So far we have been going through the curriculum lesson by lesson, checking off skills as we see them demonstrated. Fitting and checking your bike before riding, fitting your helmet properly, how to start, how to stop, how to shift gears, how to maintain a consistent pedaling cadence. It's brilliant to have kickstands on these bikes so we can create a mobile bike corral wherever we go. Getting kids in close, momentarily asking them to separate themselves from the distraction of those shiny new bicycles, and then releasing them back to their rides after instruction creates the space for clear deli