General Cycling Discussion - A Speech

Listen guys, I have to do a 2 minute speech for my class and was thinking about a few topics. Naturally bicycling comes to my mind, but I don't know where to start. What should I tell the class of 18-21 year old students who probably never ridden a bike or have no experience nor interest in it?

Just a couple of ideas off the cuff:


Abbreviated history of the TDF
How to use a heart rate monitor
How to prepare bike and clothing for winter riding, with a short description of modern fabrics (coolmax, goretex, etc).
How to bunnyhop (with a demo if the space is large enough)
My favorite energy bar recipe (with demo and snacks to follow)

DanFromDetroit

Has given exellent advice. Pick one of those or even a subset. A focused topic can be made more interesting than trying to cover more. I especially like the suggestions that can include demonstrations.

Joe

Bike weight,material used,cadence and the benifit of the silly cloths,clipless really means clipping in.

What kind of speech? Demonstration, persuasive, informative, open topic??? It makes a difference because some of the cycling stuff is really boring to the uninformed. You don’t want to dive into stuff they’re not ready to hear.

2 minute introduction to bike fit, lots of info out there (web),
fairly interesting topic (well it is here!).

Marty

Originally posted by kerk
What kind of speech? Demonstration, persuasive, informative, open topic??? It makes a difference because some of the cycling stuff is really boring to the uninformed. You don’t want to dive into stuff they’re not ready to hear.

I would say that it's and informative speech. And to give you guys and idea of what kind of crowed I'm dealing with, here are a couple of quotes from my discussion with a girl in the class.


Her: So, what kind of sports are you in to?
Me: Biking!
Her: Biking is a sport???:confused:
Me: yes, have you ever heard of TDF or someone named Lance Armstrong?(Who by the way is the man of a century)
Her: Whaaaaa?

That’s my crowed for the most part.
:rolleyes:

Tell them about DH/urban riding. Call it extreme ;). Yes, cliche and overused, but I think the kind of audience you've described would be interested in it.

Compare it to sex.Heart beat going crazy,pumping harder and harder.Ride her until the sweat is pouring from every pour in your body.

Very good Shokhead! Chuvak, if you have the gonads to do it, Shokhead’s suggestion will work great. If not you will need to think about subjects that will relate to the uninformed - money, sex, weight loss, tragedy. A speech about the TDF, focusing on the amount of money spent and won could work. There are countless stories about how people lost weight by riding. A 2 minute Lance bio would be the ultimate speech with the cancer story and his dominance of the sport. Just make sure you include how much money he makes and how much the sponsors spend on his team. Your class really won’t care that he won anything but they all know about cancer and money!

I think I'm going to go with the health benefits of biking. By the way, how much Lance actually makes, just from biking, not advertisements or product sales?

I'm sure a search on the net would find out how much he makes. Good luck with the speech.

Thanks for your support all!

Bicycling in traffic. Or is that what MeHT meant by DH/urban? (Not trying to be funny... I thought DH was downhill :confused: )

Yeah, biking in traffic. And show 'em my photos from the other thread. :p

haha, I might as well bring the DH video I have. After seing this they for sure wont ride the bike.:crash:

Tell them what ridng means to you. Not an easy thing, to be sure, but it's why you chose the subject in the first place.

You want to get their attention? Demonstrate clipless peddles by pedaling backwards with one foot. Gets them every time.