Biggest mistakes you made, starting out?

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Well, I thought for those of us starting out, it's well and fine to ask questions and have you gurus share your wisdom, but sometimes it's the questions we don't ask (often because we don't know enough to ask them) that get us into trouble.

So what are the mistakes that you made when you first decided to ride your bike to work through the mean city streets? What do you wish you'd known when you were first starting out?

Not asking this question was one of them.

Thinking the name on the frame mattered a lot more than it really does - but that said, some bikes are better than others in many repsects (better suited to different conditions anyway), it depends on what you need in a bike.

Taking the time and thinking about what I wanted as compared to what I needed.

Not buying a good saddle.

worrying what people thought of me.

Wondering what the pros would really ride if they were not paid to ride what they ride.

The following are some questions that I've answered on my way into developing commuting.

What is the best light? I started with a 5 led light that I thought would be good enough because I could be seen, then it got darker and darker and I needed a new light. This wasn't too much of a problem because I now have my old light on my helmet so that I can stare down drivers trying to cross in front of me and I have my bright headlights for general visibility.

Should I conform with all of those people wearing lycra? There was no way that I was going to wear all of that stuff and look like a tool. Today I have the tight shorts the tight top the bike shoes, I even wear a bandana under my helmet. It is so comfortable, I feel great when I get to the office, I don't sweat as much, I can carry more in the great pockets that they have. Also the bandana has a really good feature of stopping the sweat from running into my eyes.

Full commute or partial commute? Four years ago I shopped around for a cheap mountain bike to occasionally ride and with a mind to try to ride into the office. On a weekend I tried to ride the, what I thought would be 25km, commute into the office. I ended up following windy bike paths all the way in and two and half hours later with a very sore behind and absolutely exhausted I caught the train home, hung up the bike and hardly rode it again. Then last year my car started to fail me and I thought maybe I should try riding to the station. This was only a 3km bike ride and I locked my now tired looking mountain bike up at the station and partially commuted every day. After a few months they did some major works on the train line and had replacement buses. To avoid this I increased my ride to 10km and avoided the bus. After a few days of this I realised I should ride an extra 1km and save on train ticket costs by riding to the next train station. After a week of this I decided to ride another 4km to a more major train station to get some more express trains. Therefore in only three months I'd gone from riding 6km a day to 30km a day and I was starting to feel great. I then figured that I should avoid the train entirely and try for the whole journey. I ended up going to 50km a day on my mountain bike.

Mountain Bike or Road Bike for commuting, what's the difference? Now that I was riding 50km a day (and that I'd lost 13kg) I decided I could lose some weight on my bike and make it a bit easier. I bought a road bike and when I got into the office I felt a little less weary. I've gone from over an hour to get to the office to a best time of 48mins. Now that I have clipless pedals as well I feel like I'm rocketing.

A question that I would like answered is what stretching should I do now that I am using all of these different muscles?