The advantages of cycling will be obvious to those already involved in the sport, but for those who aren’t convinced, read on…
Cycling is a low-impact aerobic workout with several advantages. It also varies in intensity, making it appropriate for people of various skill levels. Cycling can be used as a form of transportation, a recreational pastime, or a competitive sport.
At a glance:
- Gets your adrenaline going
- Allows you to explore new places
- Helps to grow your social circle
- A sport for all abilities
- Environmentally friendly mode of transport
Here are some of the reasons why we think cycling is the best:
1/ Gets your adrenaline going
Whether you’re planning on commuting to work on your bike or getting to a local forest to explore the trails, going fast and pushing yourself to do better will give your adrenaline a good old rush!
Some of the speed junkies amongst us just love the rush that they get from speeding down a huge hill and picking up greater and greater speeds. Ok, it’s not for every rider, but feeling that adrenaline kick in is pretty awesome!
2/ Explore new places
By riding to work or for leisure, you allow yourself to take an alternative route and explore the area around you.
You could come to a new beautiful location or perhaps a shortcut. When you travel by bike, you have considerably more opportunities to stop and snap photographs, turn around and look back, or even escape up a side street.
When travelling at 60 mph, everything passes by far too quickly to enjoy. If you walk at 3 mph or run at 10 mph, you won’t see anything. But if you ride at 10 to 20 mph, you’ll see the world as you’ve never seen it before. An hour of riding may easily cover 20 kilometers. You may ride in and out of huge cities, seeing different neighborhoods, or you can ride through nature, watching landscapes change as you go!
Top Tips to Finding New Routes
If you’re wondering how to find new places to explore then never fear as we have our top tips to find new routes to ride here:
3/ Helps to grow your social circle
With almost 580 million bicyclists around the globe, it’s hard to go out of the house and not see someone out on a bicycle. The grassroots of cycling are centred on cycling club culture, which is focused on Saturday or Sunday club runs, bringing hundreds of thousands of cyclists across the UK and Ireland out to ride at a social pace to allow for conversation and coffee breaks.
Joining the likes of a cycling club or getting involved in local mountain bike groups is a great way to expand your social circle. Not only will you expand your friendships with other like-minded people but this is an excellent circle of knowledge to have in regards to maintenance, training and general cycling knowledge being shared with you and others.
4/ A sport for all abilities
Cycling is an open and inclusive sport; with a few modifications to the bike, those with physical disabilities can enjoy bikes just as much, if not more, than those who are able-bodied. This makes it ideal at a social level – riders of all physical abilities can take part.
No matter what age, gender or ability, nearly everyone can reap the benefits from cycling. Not only do many manufacturers around the world have bicycles for almost every type of disability with the like of handcycles enabling people recovering from certain injuries to exercise.
From young kids on balance bikes to grandparents getting out with their grandchildren cycling is a sport for everyone!
5/ Environmentally friendly mode of transport
A recent study led by the University of Oxford found that choosing a bike over a car just once a day reduces an averages person’s carbon emissions from transport by 67%, meaning that even if not all car trips could be substituted by your bike the potential for decreasing emissions is still very high.
An excellent article to read that goes into a lot of depth on the subject of how green is cycling was produced by Bike Radar which goes into everything from the manufacturing of bicycles to what the impact is on fueling yourself to ride your bike!
Even just swapping one car journey for a bike ride will benefit yourself and the environment too.
Points 1, 2 and 5 I’d agree with.
However after joining a local BCF inspired cycle club on the south coast of England and sticking with for 4 years I have my doubts about points 3 and 4. With a few exceptions the ‘cyclists’ I encountered were arrogant, snobby, aloof, thoroughly unwelcoming and often so petulant they would put a toddler to shame. Needless to say when it came to renewing the club membership fee it was ditched quicker than a new club member on a Sunday club run (unsurprisingly most new members only lasted a few weeks with that attitude – no wonder club numbers kept dropping and the club membership fee kept on going up!). Now I cycle on my own, albeit with Strava and bumping into the occasional CTC cyclist and couldn’t be happier.