Cycling!
Contents
- Robertson explains the book grew from a series of articles he wrote for the Stratford newspapers in 1890, expanded with new material at readers' request, and credits Irish authorities R. J. Mecredy of Dublin and G. Lacy Hillier of London as his main sources, noting it is believed to be the first cycling book published in Canada.
- An essay on the physiological and psychological benefits of cycling as exercise, citing the Scottish racer Lumsden, who broke his collarbone in a twenty-four-hour race at the Buffalo velodrome yet rode fifty-six more miles before the pain finally forced him to dismount.
- A survey of bicycle history from early wheeled precursors through the German Draisine, the 1876 "Challenge" ordinary, the 1884 "Kangaroo" safety built by Hillman, Herbert & Cooper, and the 1885 Rover-type safety introduced by Starley & Co., noting Irish champion R. J. Mecredy's 1889 path championship.
- Practical beginner's instruction on balance, mounting and dismounting, braking, coasting, hill-climbing, pedaling and back-pedaling technique, and riding after dark.
- Advice on choosing a machine, covering frame design, gearing (with a table of gear ratios against pedal revolutions per minute), wheel size, bearings, chains, cranks, pedals, rims, tires, and the merits and risks of buying a second-hand wheel.
- Routine maintenance instructions covering bearings, chain, cranks, cleaning, the head, lamps, oiling, the stand or axle-supporter, winter storage, and correct tire inflation.
- Field-repair guidance for bearings, a broken chain link, bent cranks, dented rims, the frame, handle-bars, pedals, and buckled or cogged wheels, aimed at the everyday accidents a rider is likely to meet.
- Explains breathlessness in cycle-racing as the buildup of carbonic acid in the blood and tissues from muscular exertion, and compares the physiological demands of running, walking, and riding on pneumatic versus solid tires.
- Advice for riders prone to becoming winded, prescribing daily cycling exercise to a gentle perspiration to develop the chest and lungs and deepen respiration without straining the heart.
- Discusses training the muscle groups used in cycling, including the back, chest, and lungs, the abdominal muscles, calves, loins, hips, and thighs, and the difference between short bursts of power and sustained endurance.
- Recommends practical, unshowy cycling attire, insisting that clothing material should be wool rather than cotton, and advises that a rider caught soaked in a rainstorm is better off going straight to bed in the wet clothes than changing.
- A treatise on the cyclist's diet, covering digestion, a mixed diet built around milk and vegetables, cookery methods such as boiling, roasting, eggs, fish, and potatoes, beverages, and the stimulant coca.
- A long chapter opening with the history of the ancient Greek Olympic games before setting out a modern training regimen covering diet, sleep, massage, bathing, morning and afternoon practice, race-day discretion, and sprinting technique, including a contributed piece, "The Cycler at Olympia," by A. L. Henderson.
- A compiled chapter of extracts credited to sources such as The Bearings and The Wheel, illustrated with portraits and short profiles of champion riders including world's champion A. A. Zimmerman, J. S. Johnson, W. C. Sanger, George Hendee, Ralph Temple, and Canadian champion W. W. Carman.
- Argues for women's cycling as physical culture alongside gymnasiums, fencing classes, and dress reform, giving mounting and dismounting instructions and printing a contributed essay by "an accomplished cyclienne" and another by a female M.L.A. who is herself a practical cyclist.
- A touring guide for Canadian wheelmen with mileage, town, and hotel tables for named routes including Hamilton to Windsor, Toronto to Gravenhurst, and Hamilton to Goderich, plus French and German phrase lists for touring abroad, road-law notes by barrister T. M. Harrison, and details on repairing and detaching the Dunlop pneumatic tire.
- Prints the club's rules and regulations for a qualifying "century": any amateur wheelman may join by riding 100 miles off track or asphalt within 14 hours, with ladies allowed 16 hours.
- A run of racing-record tables covering L.A.W.-accepted best track records, American and Canadian road records, Irish bicycle records for 1893, and a season summary of Canadian riders' first-place finishes, together with a note on accident insurance for wheelmen through Stratford agent John O'Donoghue.
- A checklist of the common causes of an athlete's failure to win a race, with short entries on the bath, courage, food, haste, idleness, irregularity, rubbing, sleep, rising early, stimulants, tobacco, overtraining, and worry.
- Argues for balanced, whole-body muscular exercise to build endurance rather than staying power in isolated muscle groups, closing with a racing biography of R. R. Macfarlane of Stratford, a Trinity Medical College student who in 1885 rode a hard-tire ordinary from Stratford to London, Goderich, and back, 162 miles in sixteen and a half hours.
- A satirical essay contrasting cycling's mild reputation with the brutality of other popular sports, quoting a mock Mexican newspaper's account of a Yale-Princeton football match and invoking Victor Hugo's description of an English prize-fight in "The Man Who Laughs."
- The author's brief closing note of thanks to readers, purchasers, and publishers, hoping the book will lead even one faltering cyclist from idleness toward health through the use of the cycle.
- A summary of an address delivered to the students of Huron College on Sunday recreation, defending moderate Sunday cycling as compatible with a divinely sanctioned weekly rest while condemning organized Sunday walking parties, driving parties, and railroad excursions.
- F. J. Pope's first-person diary of cycling from Kingston, Ontario, through Trenton, Colborne, and Highland Creek to Detroit, then on through Ann Arbor, Elkhart, South Bend, Mishawaka, and LaPorte toward the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, including a burst rear tire and a run-in with a customs collector at the Detroit river crossing.