COMMUNITY : FORUMS : RIDE

If you mean hard to ride because your riding position feels odd, your seat is probably too low. Raise it until it's at least as high as the handlebars, and when your leg is in the "down" position on a pedal your knee should be almost straight. If you can't raise the seat this high, get a bigger bike frame that will fit you :)

If by "hard to ride" you mean "feels like lots of effort to pedal", in order from easiest to hardest:

• Pump up your tyres
• Check the brakes aren't rubbing
• Oil everything
• Put some smoother tyres on
• True your wheels
• Repack your wheel bearings

A bit more detail on those: the easiest thing to do, which often has a startlingly big impact, is pumping up your tyres to 40PSI.  If they gradually leak and lose air, replace the inner tubes.  You can probably borrow a good quality pump from a bike shop if you go when they aren't busy and sweet-talk the most friendly member of staff- I find promising to come back for inner tubes if I get punctures helps :)

If your brakes rub on the wheels while you aren't pulling the levers, adjust them outwards slightly until they don't rub (but make sure you can still stop the bike if you pull the levers).

Oiling your chain, wheel bearings and crank bearings could smooth things out on an old bike.  Technically you shouldn't oil wheel bearings, but repacking them is a pain and on a cheap bike it won't make that much difference.  If you do this, make sure you keep everything oiled, especially riding in wet or dusty conditions.  If your wheels will turn for several rotations if you pick the bike up and spin them, they should be fine.

Smoother, road-style tyres have much less rolling resistance than the knobblies on cheap mountain bikes and are fine for grip- you only need knobbles on loose gravel, dirt or mud.

Wobbly wheels tend to rub on your brakes and make riding an effort.  Truing them will make it easier to adjust your brakes properly- it isn't particularly difficult, just quite time-consuming.  There are plenty of guides on the internet (or this site).

If your wheels are old, the grease may have dried up and got dusty.  Repacking wheel bearings (taking all the balls out, cleaning out the old crusty grease and putting in new squidgy grease) will make them spin like new but is fiddly and requires tools and the right kind of grease.

A good oiling would probably help. Inflating the tires would be a good idea too.

Could you upload a picture of it? Is it too small? Or does it just take a lot of torque to get going?