Making Time For Cycling

An easy pootle out over in West Yorkshire, with a few thoughts en route around how and why I try to make time for cycling. Not always easy but always worth the effort to get out on a bike ride!

Happy cycling, folks!

hi folks hope you’re doing really well welcome back to another little video and uh we’re just the other side of Jesus we’ve headed down the Spen Valley Greenway down uh south out of Bradford and heading to kind of offset Wakefield direction through to Castleford we’re on the colder way i think it is called the cycle way here very nice it is too and then around Wakefield way well Casford Way I should say we’ll pick up the uh the river air to start climbing back up towards Leads and then back over to Ian’s Gaff in Radford so about 50 mi today pretty chill hopefully the weather’s going to hold although there’s a 70% chance of rain anytime throughout the day so probably going to get caught in uh sort of these weird April showers that we’re having in June at the moment but yeah come along for the ride it’s probably going to be my last installment before the Europe trip which isn’t too far away and you might have heard me talk about that on other videos and thought as we go around today I’d just talk a little bit about making time for cycling because you know time and consistency equals getting a bit better on the bike and enjoying your cycling but uh easier said than done let’s go i’m going to listen back to the radio finding my time to hear the tune that hits my soul oh finding the words was always the hardest part for me a dispatch from the heart you have to believe till then okay we just stopped for a spot of lunch at I think it’s called Pugnese Country Park the heaven’s open so feeling very smug having a bit of cake and a cup of tea while the weather turned it’s just stopped now so we’re chancing our luck and just heading through the park it looks like that up on the horizon is uh Sandal Castle i think we were up there on a ride uh late last year so just heading out now towards uh the river air and then we’ll pick that up and start heading northwards up towards Leeds you really see just how much uh rain we’ve had in the last 45 minutes or so hopefully no more today but uh I’m not I’m not completely hopeful we won’t get caught out anyway just talking about uh topic of today’s video so making time for cycling it’s for me I think cycling enjoying time on the bike is uh intimately linked with having a certain amount of uh resilience and tolerance that you’ve built up and there’s only really one way to do that and that’s time in the saddle time on the bike and we all know don’t we as cyclists just how easy it is to lose fitness but I think for me you know not being at a particularly high level with cycling it’s uh it’s about losing fitness but also about losing that comfort on the contact points that you have it really doesn’t take too many weeks off the bike for the bike to be noticeably less comfortable when I go out on a ride than if I’m getting out fairly regularly i mean it’s a kind of obvious point to make isn’t it and also you know getting out for me to feel like I’ve done a sort of a proper ride in inverted commas you know it’s probably a couple of hours it’s a reasonably hefty time commitment as somebody who’s you know got kids and works full time etc and you know you can call it good time management good forward planning being selfish or just prioritizing cycling over other areas of your life but whatever you call it and however you do it it is important if uh you’re kind of serious about cycling in some way and I don’t mean serious in terms of the right color socks and the right raffle kit and all that stuff i just mean serious in terms of like genuine genuinely seeing the benefits of cycling genuinely wanting it to have a positive impact on on your life it’s uh if you are serious about that it is important to just make time for you know this past time that we enjoy so much little hill getting us out of Wakefield here so much for missing the rain nah we’re back in the rain it’s about 13 14° so we just got to be a little bit careful we don’t get soaked it could get quite cold with a windshill but aside from that it’s one of those days where if you pick up the bright spell the sun is strong enough to kind of warm you back up dry you out a little bit he says hopefully okay i’m just going to hang back here cuz Same as my mud guards Ian’s guards on the back of his bike they uh they protect the rider but fortunately not the course behind them and uh it’s the same for him when he’s behind me i think the only guards I’ve got on any bike genuinely just filter the water to spray straight back down onto the road oh on the uh the touring bike oh it’s proper chucking it down now okay next stop Castleford and a wild fit of optimism taking my waterproof off come on British Summer get your act together oh got to say there’s a a very nice network of ducking the branches uh cycleways around these parts i think if you’re if you can get yourself out of the uh 20 mph head down gate mindset yeah some really pleasant cycling to be had if the same goes for you it goes for me i don’t know about you darling but I wait for [Music] [Music] I’m going to fall asleep to the radio i’m hoping the moon and stars will be my sherone [Music] looking to find the answer in a dream a memo from my heart you have to believe till then if the same goes for you it goes for me we fell in love and wound up on our knees if the same goes for you it goes for me [Music] well folks we’re about 42 miles into the ride and uh we’ve made it through Leads in one piece just picking our way for a couple of miles along the canal and then I believe we’re going to pick up some roads back across to Bradford a great ride and you know I’m really glad to have carved out this uh few hours on Sunday to get another ride in and I think there’s a couple of things I’m doing at the moment certainly to try and keep myself on the bike and uh keep a little bit of consistency going things are a bit crazy at the moment and probably doing 50 60 hours a week on the work front not by choice but by equal token it’s got to be done sometimes but you know one of the things I’ve really advocated before I think a few times on video as well is if you do have the opportunity to combine getting to work with a bike ride I just think that’s one of the coolest ways to maintain a little bit of uh base fitness and I live a little bit far away from the office at the moment it’s about 20 mi each way but one thing I am doing is just making sure that a couple of times a week come hell high water rain wind or shine we get the commute in so yeah I can’t tell you just how nice it’s been even though the last few months have been really busy just knowing that I’ve got a guaranteed couple of rides a week in the bank um what a just a positive difference that’s made on my baseline fitness and you know rides today like 50 mi are just they’re just nice and if I wasn’t doing that midweek commuting I think uh you know at this point in the ride I’d be really suffering a little bit and you know these are very modest distances and we don’t go fast as you’ve probably seen from the video but it’s uh yeah it’s just nice to have a little bit of time during the week to get a couple of rides in and that’s certainly a little bit of a hack um I uh hand on heart anybody that lives within cycle commuting distance of work and can get there reasonably sort of safely without you know any crazy busy dangerous roads i just can’t recommend it highly enough and the other thing I did back in March was booked a ferry ticket across to the continent and you might remember right at the start of the year I determined not to make any cycling plans or any cycling goals and uh I still kind of didn’t with this trip i didn’t actually finalize the route until a couple of days ago actually and what that was about really back in March was just ring fencing the time and making sure that later in the year when I knew I’d be crazy busy and I am I don’t really have time to spend a week in Europe and I certainly wouldn’t book it now but I’m really glad I did so you know thank you former one more cyclist from earlier in the year you did me a solid there and I’m really looking forward to just that week of closing all the mental tabs and uh the mileage is going to be ridiculously low but I’m so looking forward to it just as a break and uh time on the bike well we got about 5 and a half miles to go we’ll be coming off the uh canal in a second and just on some roads climbing up to Ian’s gaff in Bradford so probably signing off time I think for this video and all being well the next time I see you it’ll be uh overseas just want to say thanks so much for following along if you made it this far in the video please consider liking and subscribing all that good stuff i really do appreciate every single one of you that follows along and supports the channel just remains to say stay safe out there take care of yourselves and from somewhere between Leeds and Bradford not entirely sure where happy siping i’ll see you out on the roads for the next one very soon bye [Music] 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