Ride forever training?

[Dazh]

Hi has anyone done any of the bronze, silver or gold ride forever courses? If so what are your thoughts? Thanks

[pretenda]

Havnt done them as yet. Did the half day Auckland transport one. Found it interesting and some good points to take away from it (bearing in mind i am a new rider) Am booked in for the Bronze course this Sunday so will put up some feedback after that.

[f2dz]

I've done the AT one also as well as the Silver level Ride Forever course. It was through ProRider and it was very helpful. Highly recommended, especially for the price you pay. I think it was $40 for a full day of training. Awesome value.

[george formby]

I've done the AT one also as well as the Silver level Ride Forever course. It was through ProRider and it was very helpful. Highly recommended, especially for the price you pay. I think it was $40 for a full day of training. Awesome value.

My G/F did the bronze course on Saturday. She was grinning like a cheshire cat when she got home. Covered basic handling, braking etc, was shown videos of the next phase during the day & ended up riding 250 Km on the road. Was told to do the silver in a few months & she will get her restricted licence. I'm gonna do the silver with her.
From her feed back it sounds like fantastic value for money.
Oh, she got a lovely, soft "ride forever" bike polishing cloth, the main reason I'm doing the silver..... bit jealous.

[pretenda]

My brother and I completed the Bronze course on Sunday (23/2/14).

Short version:
Was a good day with a mix of theory (Videos, static images and talking) and hands on practice. Aimed at new riders it goes over the basics. Covers the basics for Urban and open road as well as low speed handling. Great value for money.

Longer Version:
Day started with some theory at McDonald's "Meeting room" and a radio was issued to you for use during the day. Next was a pre-ride check instruction, what to look at before you ride.

Once we had gone through this lesson it was on the bikes and some urban practice through the area, the whole time the front instructor was letting us know what she was doing as she was riding (i.e moving left car hazzard on right etc). Once we got to our first stop the instructors (3 instructors and 10 pupils on the course i did) gave feedback and answered questions on what we had just done.

Now we did a session on slow speed riding (Highlight of the day for me). First the one instructor demonstrated wile another commentated what they were doing and how they were achieving it. From here we got our gear back on and gave it a go. The instructors watched and pulled people aside to give advice or walked beside you. After a little wile of this they started to get us to do low speed turns and circles. After we stopped practicing this we talked about what it was what we found and any questions.

Next was breaking. Again it was demonstrated and then we lined up to practice. After each pass the instructors (2 of them who were observing the breaking end) gave feed back and tips for the next pass. In between waiting for our next go we were encouraged to practice more low speed handling. Finishing up the practical we reviewed what we had done (Notice a pattern here).

We then moved on to some open road riding on the way to lunch. Stopped at a cafe and had a nice break and an opportunity to chat to the other riders and instructors about bikes etc in general without it being about the training.

After lunch we had a re-cap of the mornings training and discussed what we were going to do for the afternoon.

First we took a short ride from the cafe and stoped to look at a corner on the open rode and go through what infomation was present to base our decisions on the corer speed and our placement on the road. We walked to the other side and got to see the vast difference in view based on your position on the road. The afternoon saw us doing more open road riding concentrating on safe lines into and through the corners in 100, 80 and 50km areas we did this by following the instructors through the corners. After another stop and discussion on what we had done we changed the line up and started moving ahead of the instructors so they could see the lines that we were taking into and through the corners.

After the last session was over we went back to the start point and had a bit of a debrief on the day and then went around all of the participants asking what they found the most useful etc. Got certificates and ride for ever cloth. And then departed ways.

So great value or money im looking forward to doing the next course.

[Ulsterkiwi]

Did a Ride Forever course last year, before the Bronze, Silver, Gold thing was introduced. Format was similar to what others have descibed here.
Did heaps for my confidence and perhaps more importantly really showed how much there is to learn.
Will be doing another course this year for sure.

[Stevee2]

Doing the Bronze course on Saturday, looking forward to it!

[SNF]

Did a bronze one not long back. Was great, learned a lot. It can be a step towards CBTA. Got an offer to do a free CBTA training session preparation tomorrow, which I badly want to do but I'm going to be trapped in uni instead. Fuck. Why couldn't it be for next Monday?

[McShanNZ]

Completed the Bronze training a while ago, the day started at 09:00 at a local cafe, got home around 17:45 that evening. Well worth it.

The instructor, Andrew, came up from Wellywood. Just the two of us noobs on the Saturday, although he had the Silver group Sunday. We did the slow control stuff first with emergency stopping etc. Then did a run up to Mokau for lunch, we ended up going over Mt Messenger 4x in total.

Learned heeeeaps. Keen to get into the CBTA sometime too.

[Dazh]

It certainly sounds like it is great value! Thank you everyone for your responses, I have just booked mine for march!

[DamianW]

Did an AT half-day course in early Feb and a silver RideForever full day course in Albany last weekend. Basically, it's a no brainer. Good on you for signing up, you'll be better off for it.