How do you feel when cycling?

[Ming the Merciless]

I’ve just been reading the latest replies in the end of the road thread. A few mentioned that cycling is just about exercise for them. I thought I’d start a thread where you can post how you feel when cycling.

When I cycle I enter this mental state of contentment and calmness. I can tune in to the physicality, the rhythm of the legs turning, the muscles working, heart beating, the changes in my breathing. I can appreciate the earthly aromas that permeate the air. I can listen to the rustling leaves. I can gaze up at Red Kites whistling above, and wonder what it’d be like to soar like that. I can feel the wind and rain on my skin and laugh. I can appreciate a cold crisp winters day with a crystal clear blue sky. I can appreciate the secret wold of riding at night and the badger and owl encounters. I can gaze at the stars and really see the Milky Way brilliantly bright in some of the dark skys I pass through. I can feel the warmth of the sun as we move into spring. I can feel satisfaction at climbing a hill without stopping, and gaze far into the distance, at a view I truly appreciate. I can laugh and whoop whilst stopping down the other side as fast as I dare.

I can feel alive and relaxed when not cocooned from Nature. I am in a moment, where time and thought, emotions and experience flow differently, in a pleasing and heightened way.

 

[Sharky]

I used to do a long commute, 23 miles each way, much to the amazement of many of my colleagues.
On more than a few commutes, I must have gone into some kind of "auto pilot". I would get to a certain point on the route and wouldn't have any recollection of the earlier part of the route.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

I used to do a long commute, 23 miles each way, much to the amazement of many of my colleagues.
On more than a few commutes, I must have gone into some kind of "auto pilot". I would get to a certain point on the route and wouldn't have any recollection of the earlier part of the route.

I think that is normal
I used to have a 20 minute walk to the train when I commuted
I often got to the main road and wondered if I had somehow teleported!

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

I my case I do it for the exercise and fresh air

my not exercise in a "training" sort of way - just being alone and using some muscles somehow

and I like being outside and getting somewhere so the view is constantly changing

I feel free and can allow my thought to wander around and balance
I need something like that or I get stressed and jittery

my wife insisted that I carry on over lockdown because I would go mad if I didn;t get out on my own a few times a week

 

[roubaixtuesday]

I’ve just been reading the latest replies in the end of the road thread. A few mentioned that cycling is just about exercise for them. I thought I’d start a thread where you can post how you feel when cycling.

When I cycle I enter this mental state of contentment and calmness. I can tune in to the physicality, the rhythm of the legs turning, the muscles working, heart beating, the changes in my breathing. I can appreciate the earthly aromas that permeate the air. I can listen to the rustling leaves. I can gaze up at Red Kites whistling above, and wonder what it’d be like to soar like that. I can feel the wind and rain on my skin and laugh. I can appreciate a cold crisp winters day with a crystal clear blue sky. I can appreciate the secret wold of riding at night and the badger and owl encounters. I can gaze at the stars and really see the Milky Way brilliantly bright in some of the dark skys I pass through. I can feel the warmth of the sun as we move into spring. I can feel satisfaction at climbing a hill without stopping, and gaze far into the distance, at a view I truly appreciate. I can laugh and whoop whilst stopping down the other side as fast as I dare.

I can feel alive and relaxed when not cocooned from Nature. I am in a moment, where time and thought, emotions and experience flow differently, in a pleasing and heightened way.

Very eloquently put.

Before mounting my steed I have a feeling of anticipation, of possibility. What will today hold? When I get on the bike, particularly after a break, I get an immediate sense of exhilaration: how is it possible for this to be so effortless?

Climbing hills I am at one with my body; I can sense the air entering and leaving my lungs, and the beating of my heart. It becomes meditative on long climbs, someone almost as though I'm observing from afar.

Descending is joy, the wind in my hair and the oneness with my machine leaning into the hairpins.

And always, the intensification of just being alive with whichever of the elements are beating down today, and the scenery, fauna and flora around.

Embodying the above: On the descent of the Izoard, just before a thunderstorm hit.

 

[Sea of vapours]

Very nicely put @Ming the Merciless. I concur on the majority of that positivity and sensory experience around cycling. I largely cycle alone for those reasons; it's a different experience with other people, and whilst there are gains there are considerable losses too, largely around the experiential things you've described above. To some extent, what you're describing is a form of flow state of heightened awareness, and I think is best achieved by relatively long, solo rides (by which I mean 100km or so). I rode a couple of hundred kilometres of Pennines and Dales lumps last Friday, the last two hours of which was in the dark at around 5C, after a full day on the bike, and I was feeling increasingly energised throughout that last section; energy was rising throughout the day really. It's remarkable what bicycles can enable in terms of physical distance covered, and how uplifting the experience almost invariably is, especially in less than comfortable conditions.

I specifically do not cycle 'for exercise'. There is no way I'd cycle a lot, probably not at all in fact, if that was all it gave me. I do do interval sessions once in a while but it's hard to see those as beyond the mundane and functional, enabling the 'better' cycling (though I do manage to raise my perception of those to some degree by the surroundings being inevitably beautiful in the Dales). My partner primarily enjoys short, fast, 'training' rides. Oddly enough, we don't cycle together overly much !

 

[Drago]

I feel like a middle aged sex god when put on the bike.

 

[Dogtrousers]

I only cycle for exercise. This is true in that I never cycle with any useful purpose to fulfil. I'm not trying to get somewhere for a reason. So what am I doing? I must be exercising.

That said, I often do indulge in a spot of Fotherington-Thomas style "hullo clouds, hullo sky" kind of stuff if I'm cycling in nice surroundings.

But I also cycle up and down the hills of Crystal Palace, which is an area devoid of natural niceness. I cycle in the rain and the dark when the surroundings anywhere are pretty horrible. And I cycle on a turbo in my shed, which is a shed.

Whatever the surroundings, they all have in common the chance to just be on my own with my thoughts, thinking of anything, turning over current concerns, nothing in particular or often absolutely nothing at all apart from occasionally pondering when the next turning is and whether my legs will give up before the end of the ride.

It's undeniably exercise, and it's a form of exercise that I find very satisfying. One thing it isn't is sport.

 

[Homers Double]

Mine depends on the day, if it's a 6.30am regular loop on a Thursday morning before work then it can feel like a chore. If it's a 3pm ride around the hills on a warm sunny sunday then it's idilic.

 

[ebikeerwidnes]

Things like walking and cycling with no real purpose do free up your mind and get it out of the ruts it is in

When I was working in IT I used to say that I fixed more problems when out walking the dog then I ever did at work

which was probably not true - but with complicated things it was certainly a major factor
When I had a modem at home and could dial into work (back in the day - when Moses were a lad) I would even login to work when I got home and leave some notes for myself

 

[yello]

Perfectly put MingTheM I am with you 100% there. Your words have reminded me of the many feelings I have had over many rides.

I don't want to get too zen about it but it is actually a zen kinda thing for me nonetheless. Maybe something like what has become known as mindfulness in some ways, except for me it's less self-aware than the mindfulness I've read about, and more 'being a part of' something in a selfless way. It's a 'one-ness' if I can put it like that. When I'm riding, I feel like I'm both travelling through and a part of. There's a serenity and a deep contentment.

I have to remark on something you mentioned - night riding. It's a different world. I experience a whole raft of other feelings - the sights and sounds of night time, particularly rural . There is something for me about watching the sun coming up, seeing things waking, another world starting up, the nightime world transitioning into day. I first experienced it when doing early morning rides in London (summer time, avoiding both the traffic and the heat of the day) I called my circuit 'Le colline a nord di Londra' - took me up through Regents Park, St Johns Wood, Swiss Cottage, Hampstead, Highgate.... every Saturday morning. Then later when I was introduced to audax, the overnighters. I remember one here (in France), on a hill overlooking the Loire valley, seeing the lights of the towns and steam from cooling towers of whatever industries... it was magical... even as I was stood in the p*ssing rain of a thunderstorm! In fact, the rain gave a plus factor. So many memories; the glowing eyes of whatever creatures in forests as you pass.... ah man, I could go on.

Cycling gives me something nothing else can; an awareness that I am just a part of one huge wonderful world. Serenity.

 

[yello]

I remember cycle touring in Scotland, grinding up a hill against a howling gale and pissing rain, chanting a mantra of 'you will NOT beat me'... and laughing at the silliness of it all. I was SO alive!

 

[Ming the Merciless]

@yello Serenity, the oneness all make sense, being part of your environment, the universe, not separate. I think particularly with long distance rides, Audax, rides that take you through the night; your mind enters a stillness, and it’s at that point the connectedness you speak of, occurs.

It is through prolonged physical movement in Nature , that the mind slows and becomes still, the senses are highly tuned, and connectedness begins. I wonder how much what we are experiencing is what was once called religious ecstasy.

”Religious ecstasy is a profound emotional and spiritual experience that transcends ordinary consciousness, often characterized by feelings of unity, transcendence, and heightened awareness”

 

[yello]

and finishing LEL in 2009, sitting early morning at traffic lights in Cheshunt (?) with barely a few km to go, reflecting on all that had happened (it was shall we say eventful that year) and contrasting that with the normality of the traffic lights, the pavements, the shop windows... real 'day after' stuff

 

[a.twiddler]

I’ve just been reading the latest replies in the end of the road thread. A few mentioned that cycling is just about exercise for them. I thought I’d start a thread where you can post how you feel when cycling.

When I cycle I enter this mental state of contentment and calmness. I can tune in to the physicality, the rhythm of the legs turning, the muscles working, heart beating, the changes in my breathing. I can appreciate the earthly aromas that permeate the air. I can listen to the rustling leaves. I can gaze up at Red Kites whistling above, and wonder what it’d be like to soar like that. I can feel the wind and rain on my skin and laugh. I can appreciate a cold crisp winters day with a crystal clear blue sky. I can appreciate the secret wold of riding at night and the badger and owl encounters. I can gaze at the stars and really see the Milky Way brilliantly bright in some of the dark skys I pass through. I can feel the warmth of the sun as we move into spring. I can feel satisfaction at climbing a hill without stopping, and gaze far into the distance, at a view I truly appreciate. I can laugh and whoop whilst stopping down the other side as fast as I dare.

I can feel alive and relaxed when not cocooned from Nature. I am in a moment, where time and thought, emotions and experience flow differently, in a pleasing and heightened way.

All the above. And without once mentioning the R word!

I'm sure that exercise is a big motivator for many, and maybe that in itself is sufficient, what with meeting personal speed and mileage targets, and I can relate to that in my own modest way. For others it might just be convenient transport, with pleasures snatched along the way.

I mainly ride alone, and am pretty self sufficient. I don't crave company when I'm out on the bike.

For me, it's more than just the numbers. From the smugness of having a folding bike that you can get on any train as luggage without booking, even riding one distances which you'd previously believed unfeasible, via just using an ordinary bike to do extraordinary things which to yourself become mundane while still being remarkable to non cyclists. Expanding your horizons both on the ground and inside your head. If you ride something enough you get to become part of it. You don't think about the mechanics of balancing or changing direction. The semicircular canals inside your ear take care of such things like an autopilot, leaving your mind free to ponder other things, absorb new sensations, at times amazingly enhanced ones.

I used to be quite into the mechanics of it all, especially experimenting with gearing, but now that it's fairly easy to get suitably low and high gearing in the same package, not so much. I don't mind old tech, as long as it works. As long as the man/machine combination can get up those hills, I'm happy. Once aboard and settled in, I become a mechanical Centaur.

The changing of the seasons still feels new and exciting, the colours, the wildlife, the birdsong. It's surprising what you can see as you silently pass by on your bike. Once you get into the right frame of mind, it's mindfulness on wheels.

I'd thought about doing a night ride this year but as chance would have it, on my way back from my first century ride for decades I got lost, and once on the right track it became dark. Perhaps it was serendipitous happenstance, but I ended traversing the dead straight section of the Wales Coast Path from Hawarden Bridge to Chester on a virtually moonless pitch black night with not another person about. It's seven miles on top of a flood dyke with no lighting on most of the path. Hanging in space, just a pool of light in front, the sound of the tyres, blackness all around and nothing to give a sense of movement. It was a magical, almost trancendental experience. The rest of the ride home via owl -hooting, rabbit bounding Chester Greenway and the lanes was brilliant too. Something I'll remember for a long time.

Since discovering recumbents there's been a new dimension. With under seat steering there was a truly "above us (and ahead of us!) only sky"
experience. Even with over seat steering it's still pretty panoramic.

Getting cold and wet is part of it all. Being able to not mind getting cold and wet, sometimes that's the bit that needs work.