Orny's Cycling Journal

In my previous post celebrating 100,000 miles on the bike, I promised an upcoming post about the motivations that underlie my passion for cycling. Here it is, with a shorter bonus postscript listing some things I actually dislike about cycling.

I started pedaling when I was around five years old, when my parents first plunked my ass down on a Marx Big Wheel plastic tricycle and turned me loose in our driveway. I’ve been pedaling ever since, with the only break happening during college (when I got my first car) through my first full-time job (and my first new car).

That tallies up to about 45 years where cycling has been a central part of my life.

It might seem a little late to think about this, but I’ve decided to take a look at why. What is it that motivates me to keep pedaling, after having already ridden for such a ridiculously long time?

The impetus for looking into that question came from a recent GCN video, wherein one of the presenters asked himself why he never got tired of cycling. It might be worth a watch if the question is meaningful to you. A few of the answers he shared resonated with me, and some of them absolutely did not, but the question remained…

What is it about riding a bike that still appeals to me?

But two items of business need to be mentioned before I can share my own answers.

First, after I’ve shared my motivations, I’ll share the much shorter list of things I hate about cycling, which might actually be more interesting to some.

And second: writing about my motivations is tricky. The list of factors is long and detailed, and it would be difficult to convey my depth of feeling without getting really verbose and boring my audience to death. So I’m going to keep my comments brief, and ask the reader to infer that depth of feeling. So keep that in mind while you read my summary descriptions.

That said, here’s my list. There’s a dozen of them, in single-sentence bullet-list form:

• Cycling – especially the sensation of speed – is exciting and fun, and that’s just as true at age 60 as it was at age 6.
• Cycling allows me to enjoy the outdoors, connecting with nature, breathing fresh air, and feeling the sunshine and wind.
• It gets me out into the world around me, seeing the countryside and the varying contours of the land, while learning all kinds of details about the places I ride through.
• I’ve always needed a physical outlet for expending excess energy, and cycling provides a healthy way to work myself to fatigue or exhaustion.
• The health benefits of cycling are greater than almost any other human activity, contributing directly to cardiac, respiratory, circulatory, muscular, and digestive health (without even mentioning mental and emotional health).
• Cycling can burn a tremendous amount of calories, which makes it great for dieting, or (as in my case) a good way to get away with eating lots and poorly.
• I get to exercise my analytical side by tracking and comparing all the quantitive data that’s produced, such as my mileage, power, and fitness numbers.
• With such clear ways to quantify performance, cycling makes it easy to set goals for myself, and a genuine sense of achievement upon reaching my goals.
• Group rides offer a social element that is lacking in many of my other daily activities, and I’ve made a number of good friends as a result of this pastime.
• Many rides wind up as treasured memories that I look back upon and will enjoy for a lifetime.
• As everyone knows, one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done is raising money to support cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, through my 26-year devotion to the Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride.
• For all these reasons, cycling is clearly a great use of my time; among the many options I have for spending time, cycling beats nearly all other alternatives.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s an extremely compelling list of reasons to get out and ride, even – or perhaps especially – now that I’m into my sixties.

In contrast, there are certain aspects of cycling that I avoid like the plague. So, as promised, here is my much shorter list of the things that I hate about cycling.

Number one is that I only ride on the road. There are lots of other cycling disciplines, including mountain biking, gravel riding, cyclocross, track riding, bikepacking, downhill, stunt riding, and more. I don’t do those. I am a roadie, and exclusively a roadie.

I don’t race. In the U.S., most bike races are criteriums, taking place on small, technical courses with lots of turns. That kind of close-quarters racing is insanely dangerous, and I’m just not interested in courting crashes and injuries. And while I might enjoy other formats like hill climbs or time trials, I really have no desire to compete against other cyclists. I much prefer challenging myself with completing a long and/or difficult course like a century or a brevet.

I don’t do interval workouts or structured training programs. Although high intensity work is a vital part of any training regimen, I detest the self-induced extreme suffering of riding according to a spreadsheet and a stopwatch. What works best for me is the Swedish idea of “Fartlek” – or “speed-play” – where you emphasize varying your intensity based on the terrain around you, with some degree of both spontaneity and specificity.

I don’t ride a bike with motorized assist. While there might come a day when old age and feebleness force me to accept powered assistance from an e-bike, I will avoid that as long as I possibly can. Since exercise intensity is also an important part of healthy aging, I’m not going to surrender any of my fitness until I’m forced to.

And finally… I don’t mind big hills, darkness, or cold weather – I have appropriate gear for any of that stuff – but I do my best to avoid riding in wet weather. Even though it’s really only miserable at first (once you’re soaked thru, you can’t get any wetter), it wreaks havoc on the equipment and necessitates very thorough post-ride cleaning and maintenance: a messy, tedious chore I’d much rather avoid.

All this might leave you thinking that I‘m always ready and eager to ride, but that’s not always the case. In fact, there’s often times when cycling is the last thing I want to do. Usually that’s because I’m overtrained, when I’ve worked myself too hard for too long, without giving my body sufficient time to fully recover, leaving me tired and irritable. After all, it’s a fundamental cycling truth that you don’t get stronger while riding; that’s when you incur the damage that promotes muscle growth. That growth and strengthening can only happen while you’re resting, so it’s important for cyclists to rest just as diligently as they train.

That’s why I have time to contemplate and share why I’m still in love with cycling… Because I’m taking a much-needed rest day after riding for six days in a row! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe there’s a big ole burrito downstairs with my name on it…

When people effuse about cycling, one of the things they mention quite often is the pace. While drivers careen through towns and view the space between destinations as little more than time spent “in-between”, cyclists have the time and leisure to fully appreciate the landscape they pass through.

While drivers stay safely isolated within their steel and glass cages as they fight one another for space on their main roads, cyclists eschew the automobile’s grey strip mall hell, often finding hidden gems that the rest of the world has passed by.

For the cyclist, the journey is a rare opportunity to spend precious time fully immersed in the natural environment. How many of the drivers who passed me last week registered the lilac-saturated sweetness of the air their sealed contraptions sped through?

One could of course walk, but it’s difficult to cover very much ground at a walking pace, and the scenery doesn’t change very much for the pedestrian. A runner’s pace would be better, but it’s arduous to maintain for any length of time. Yes, the pace of a cyclist seems about right.

Perhaps for me some of that has to do with my hobby as a writer. Whether I’m writing fiction or a travelogue, I try to immerse my reader in the sensory experience of a setting. That requires spending enough time there to not just observe a place, but also to contemplate and ruminate on it, as well, to activate the imagination.

At the same time, too much description and not enough action bogs a story down, so after one has built up an image of a place in the reader’s mind, it’s important to show what happens there and then move on to the next setting. In both fiction and travel writing, there’s a natural rhythm and sense of movement.

I enjoy that same sensation of rhythm and movement on the bike. As I pass any given landmark, I have the time to see its details, hear its sounds, and smell its smells. Enough time to build a vivid, lasting, multidimensional image of it in my mind, then the next scene comes into view. The bicycle permits an ongoing, dynamic collaboration between the world and the appreciative cyclist that would be difficult to achieve in any other way.

It is life unfolding and revealing its splendor, as the road unwinds itself effortlessly mile after mile. It is—if you can excuse the cliche—poetry in motion. Which is a perfect segue for my closing quotation.

He might well have been talking about a bike ride when one wise old man wrote:

Congratulations! Today is your day.
You’re off to great places! You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

You’re on your own, and you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

You’ll look up and down streets. Look ’em over with care.
About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”

With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
You’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.

And you may not find any you’ll want to go down.
In that case, of course, you’ll head straight out of town.

It’s opener there
In the wide open air.

Out there things can happen and frequently do
To people as brainy and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen, don’t worry, don’t stew.
Just go right along. You’ll start happening too.

OH! THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!