Admission time… I’m a secret, or perhaps ‘recovering’ left-hander. That is to say I write and use a mouse with my left hand, but apart from that I’m basically right-handed. I play guitar right-handed. If I played racquet sports or golf, I’d do it right-handed. I still rely on my left hand for detail stuff, so if I was painting a picture, I’d be left-handed, but painting a wall I’d probably use my right, or both hands equally, depending on which awkward corner I needed to get into.
Handedness doesn’t really come into cycling that much. You would think that, perhaps, which way round you ran your brakes might depend on your stronger arm. Saying that, though, would you want your front or rear brake covered by your stronger (or less prone to fatigue) arm? Regardless, brake-ness mostly follows country-specific conventions that appear to be based on which side of the road we ride on. No one has ever given a definitive answer to this, although it’s said that having your non-signalling hand covering your rear brake while turning across traffic makes sense. That, or it’s to do with bicycle pistol duelling…
Apart from that, handedness doesn’t really come into bike riding. We’re more influenced by footedness, as nearly every rider puts a favourite foot forward when freewheeling. This can sometimes affect your riding more than you’d think –think about those tight, Euro-style switchbacks. Everyone has a side of corner they can ride best, and it’s usually a foot-forward thing. I ride right foot forward (is that ‘Goofy’ in skater language? I’ll check with our many office skaters) and find left-handers easier. Right foot forward on a left-hander means that your hips are more likely to be pointing the way you want to go. This, for me, means that left-hand turns feel easier.
Conversely, when the reciprocal right-hander comes along, I can either switch to leftie forward, which feels weird unless you do it a lot, or I can just bumble around with my inside foot forward, which is equally awkward and contrary with the mechanics of things.
Meanwhile, on a tandem, you’re locked in-step with your fellow passenger, which can mean that footedness can make or break a tandem partnership, regardless of talent. This was slammed home when I took legendary downhiller Jason McRoy on the back of my old Dawes tandem, sometime back in the mists of time. As we approached each corner, my right-foot-forward position would forcefully flip to left-foot-forward as my co-pilot subconsciously set up for the corner with his favourite foot. Despite being on the front, I was just a passenger. A power struggle would ensue, mid-corner, as I tried to ‘correct’ him, which then found us just lumpily pedalling around the corner as each rider tried to put their favourite foot forward.
Should we embrace our handedness and footedness, or should we aim to harmonise both limb-sides equally? Surely your ‘Chocolate Foot’ (as Hans Rey puts it) should benefit from a bit more trail protection, as it’s the first in line for the rocks and foliage? Perhaps we need armoured ‘Chocolate Foot’ shoes just on the one side, a little bit like speedway flat tracker motorcyclists get a steel-armoured shoe on their leading foot.
Nah, forget it. Crashes and spills never happen how you expect them to. Your lead foot doesn’t get extra injured in a crash; what actually hits the ground/bike/street furniture is usually a completely random selection of (usually pointy, but not always) body parts. We’ve all woken up the day after a crash and thought ‘How on earth did I bruise the back of my knee/ear/third toe…?’
Your best bet is to decorate any bruised bits with a Sharpie, make a template and return to the scene of the crash a few weeks later with some bespoke armour that only covers half a shin, one ankle, a thumb, both buttocks and one collarbone. After all, that’s where you landed last time, so why not that bit again next?
It’s worth a shot. It’s as random as wearing a thicker glove on your lead hand, just in case…
