Never Fall Out Of Love With Cycling Again

Is your cycling motivation fading? You’re not alone! GCN’s Simon Richardson dives into how he’s managed to keep his passion for cycling alive for over 30 years – something that his good friend Dan and many viewers struggle with. Discover Si’s core motivation strategies and tips for eternal cycling happiness

Chapters: ⏱️
0:00 – The Motivation Problem
0:40 – Why Keep Riding if You Don’t Enjoy It?
1:24 – What’s the Secret?
1:54 – A Brief History: From Mountain Bike Phase to Pro
3:06 – The Core Reasons I Still Love Cycling
4:14 – The Upside of a Crap Ride
5:22 – The Power of Routine & Group Rides
6:30 – Short Rides vs. Long Rides: Any Ride is Worth It
8:43 – The Secret: Variety is the Spice of Cycling
9:29 – Final Thoughts & Conclusion

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Simon’s secret involves variety (road, mountain, cyclocross, cargo, gravel). If you could only keep one discipline for the rest of your life, which single type of riding do you think is the most essential for keeping your overall cycling motivation high? Let us know in the comments! 👇

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#gcn #cycling #roadcycling #roadbike #bike #bikes #bikelife #spiceofcycling

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Recently on GCN, my good friend Dan has made a couple of videos about how he’s struggled to find the motivation to ride his bike. Now, Dan loves cycling, but he’s fallen in and out of love with riding for years. And this is something that we now know resonates with a lot of you, too. But I thought I could tell the other side of the story, and that might help as well. You see, I’ve been riding bikes for a very long time now, and I’ve never fallen out of love. So, I thought if I could work out why and how that’s the case, then maybe you might get some ideas or perhaps even just tricks and tips that could get you through the tough times. Wait, why would you want to keep riding if you don’t enjoy it anymore? That is a very valid question. And if you actually don’t enjoy riding anymore, then yeah, don’t do it. That’s totally fine. But I suspect there’s a lot of you out there who struggle for one reason or another. but ultimately who do want to keep riding. And it’s no wonder, right? It’s really good for your fitness, really good for your health. You can undoubtedly remember all of the fun times you’ve had, the epic rides, the laughs with your mates, the midride coffee stops, the post ride beers, the challenges completed, and you know what as well? Probably not seeing all that time, dare I say it, money that you’ve already invested go to waste. So, what is the secret to eternal cycling? This might actually just be because I’m really weird and obsessed, and we may well find that out in a minute. But anyway, here’s hoping. Perhaps we should quickly go back to the beginning for a bit of context. For me, it started when I was 8 years old and I had a conversation about mountain bike racing, which I thought sounded amazing. So, I asked my mom and dad very nicely 49,000 times if I could have a bike for my birthday. They thought it would be a phase, but they took a gamble. Spoiler alert, it was not a phase. Uh, then I carried on racing mountain bikes. Loved it. Someone lent me a road bike to help with my training, which I thought was really boring. So, apologies for that. But as I got older, I realized that road bikes were fun as well. My results improved. I started getting sponsored. I ended up on the national team. I raced mountain bikes, road bikes, cycle across bikes. Uh, and then road bikes only actually. And then about 10 years after that, I decided I’d had enough of racing bikes for a living and I began working at a startup which was making videos about cycling and putting them on YouTube. Um, didn’t think it would catch on. Welcome back. You’re watching the Global Cycling Network with me, Simon Richardson. But it seemed like fun. And then here we are 13 years later, still making cycling videos on YouTube. Still riding road bikes, still riding mountain bikes, still riding cyclross bikes, also riding electric cargo bikes and gravel bikes, too, which I also didn’t think would catch on. So, why do I love it? Well, it’s complicated. I like the feeling of pushing myself physically. I like the feeling of challenging myself mentally. I like the reward of training, not for a long-term goal these days, but just that sensation I get session by session. I find that I like that it makes it easy to catch up with some of my oldest friends. And you know what? Sometimes I just like the fact that it gets me to my destination faster than in a car, cheaper than on a train, and having done something positive for my well-being. But like any good relationship, there has to be a foundation. And in this case, I actually just like the feeling of riding a bike. I like going fast. I like carving turns when I’m off-road. I like technical challenges. I love the feeling of my wheels sliding around. Yes, I know skids are for kids, but hey, now I don’t know whether you found that useful at all. I’m not sure, but almost certainly I can imagine that you might be sat there thinking, well, of course it’s easy for him to ride given that he loves it so much. But that’s actually not true. A common misconception about being really into bikes is the thought that I must love every ride. And this is not true. Sometimes we go out for a bike ride and I really don’t enjoy it. I’m not talking about rides where I ride so hard for so long that I don’t just not enjoy cycling anymore, but I actively hate it and my life in general. That’s never happened before. I’ve just had to stop and be sick. because invariably those actually turn out to be some of the best. No, I am talking about the kind of ride that is completely unmemorable on average roads in average weather. But that is okay. I mean, not every cup of coffee is amazing, but I still love coffee. Not every episode of Love Island is amazing, but plenty of you still like that. And unlike Love Island, you need to ask yourself the question, is there an upside to a crap bike ride? I mean, do you feel satisfied that you went out, do you feel better for having done something? And even if you say no to both of those things, has it actually done you some good? Yes. Yes, it has. Another common misconception is that if you don’t want to ride your bike, you actually don’t want to ride your bike. And this also is not true. You see, at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, I quite often don’t want to ride my bike. But yet the 2hour blast that I do with my mates at that time each and every week is almost always the best ride of the week. So I think the tip here is to have a routine so that on those days where you can’t be bothered or you don’t feel like it, you go out anyway. Why? Because you know that you’ll enjoy it. And even if you don’t enjoy that particular ride, you know that by going out consistently, you’ll be able to enjoy your riding more overall. You won’t get into the fitness death spiral. You know the one you miss a couple of sessions, so you start feeling guilty and then you start getting worried that your fitness will erode and then you worry that when you do go out, it’s going to hurt more and you’re going to be really slow. And before long, you end up like Daniel Lloyd. [Music] For a long time, I thought it wasn’t worth riding a bike for less than two hours. Yes, I was young. Yes, professional cyclist as well. And yes, I also had no idea what responsibility was cuz now I know that any bike ride is worth doing. 1 hour great. You know what? 30 minutes still great. And you know what else? Long bike rides can be boring. Yeah. So, here’s my tip. Do short bike rides and don’t waste your life in zone 2 if you don’t want to. A big one for me is also catching up with my mates. So, a lot of my riding is solo, but I have one guaranteed ride a week where I meet up with a little group, ride, and then stop for a brew afterwards. I spend my work time surrounded by friends which makes me really fortunate I know but life is really busy and so catching up with other friends can be really difficult which is why having some locked in time every week is golden and that is a real motivation to ride as well but you do have to work at it. So you have to be open to new riding buddies as people come and go and you have to send messages sometimes or be that person that gets people out on the group ride. But undoubtedly the biggest thing for me is that cycling has never just been one thing. So as I said a moment ago when I started out I was mountain biking and then I added other disciplines after that. And that variety is something that I still got now. So when I ride to work that’s always on the road and that’s a constant throughout the year. Then on my own time in sort of late autumn, winter, spring, when the trails are sloppy, I’ll be on my cyclacross bike. Then when the trails are dry, I’ll be on my mountain bike. And that balance of three disciplines always keeps it fresh. But then you can also throw into the mix structured training as well. Not for a goal, but just for the hell of it. Like going out and trying to ride four sub4minute hill climbs on my road bike or doing a session up out of the Zift or just trying to hang with the young guns on a fast group ride. My tip then is to not just do the same rides all the time. Variety will keep it fresh. Whether that’s different roads, different training, or even a different bike. Hopefully you’ll found some of this useful. And even if you haven’t, I hope that you’ve appreciated getting a little bit more insight into the type of riding that I do and why I do it and maybe how I do it as well. Cuz it’s certainly not easy to get out these days. Not all the time anyway. And I do wonder whether in part I love cycling as much now as I ever have done because there’s a a scarcity factor to it these days. But anyway, hit the thumbs up button if you’ve enjoyed this video. And uh well, if I’m honest, I’m going to try and sneak in a few extra KS before home time. [Music]