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Now that you had many hours of experience riding a bike , you can easily ride your bicycle.

I sense that in this sentence the participle clause in bold adds a meaning to the sentence that "you" spent many hours experiencing a bike.

My question is that why there is not "in" before "riding bike"?

Would there be a difference in the meaning if we put "in" before it?

Secondly in my understanding of present participle clause, these clauses have got the same subject as the main sentence and depending on the context they modify the main sentence in terms of how or when. But in the sentence above, "riding bike" is a part of the main sentence let alone assuming complementary role or constituting a clause.

How could it be possible that "riding a bike" can be a part of the main sentence, supposing that it is a participle clause?

If it is not a participle clause so what it is?

Why there is no "in" before it?

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    experience in something (noun) (I have a lot of experience in Web development), experience doing something (verb or gerund). Though, as far as I know, both "I have experience in teaching English" and "I have experience teaching English" are fine English. – Michael Rybkin Nov 23 '15 at 22:09
  • On a side note, you can think of "riding bike" is an adjectival construction that describes the kind of experience you had, but that just goes after the noun it modifies. Question: many hours of what kind of experience did you have? Answer: you had many hours of experience riding bike. – Michael Rybkin Nov 23 '15 at 22:17
  • @CookieMonster if we are to regard "riding bike" as an adjective describing the experience so why don't we simply put "of" between experience and riding bike( ..experience of riding bike,) – Cihangir Çam Nov 23 '15 at 22:21
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    And actually it should be "riding a bike". I had a brain fart and quite frankly didn't notice that. – Michael Rybkin Nov 23 '15 at 22:46
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    I don't know where you got your example from, but I think it's better to say: Now that you've had many hours of experience riding a bike, you can easily ride your own bike. – Michael Rybkin Nov 23 '15 at 23:07
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It would be more common to say "experience of riding a bike" - "experience in" would be very unusual - for the specific case of "riding a bike".

The phrase "riding a bike" is a gerund - a present participle phrase being used as a noun.

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You are right between experience and riding a bike a preposition is lacking. But English has a tendency to drop such prepositions. As Cookie Monster said above you can say experience in teaching English or experience teaching English.

"riding a bike" is no clause, a clause has a subject and a verb. It's only a participle phrase.

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  • ...are there commas lacking in your answer? The first sentence reads strangely. – JavaLatte Aug 20 '16 at 19:25

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