The Joy of Riding

Cycling isn’t always about the race: sometimes it’s just about being on your bike, touring with your mates. But organising a tour takes, well… organisation. So when a group of disorganised riders couldn’t get it together to plan their own tour, they attached their wagon to the inaugural knysna bull.

- Jonathan Ancer

To everything in life, there are ebbs and flows, peaks and troughs; the markets, seasons, tides, politics, relationships… and even cycling. Sometimes we have a specific riding goal: to lock down a time at a race like the 947 or the Cape Town Cycle Tour, or to finish a stage race in a certain position – in the top 10, or top 100, or top half (or in my case, just ‘not last’). We’re motivated. We embark on a diet (lose fat, gain power), and a training programme – build base kilometres, do intervals until our eyes bleed, work on speed, pore over data, sharpen our technical skills, practise riding in a bunch, and taper so that on race day, we’re at our peak when the gun goes off. 

Those are the flows. 

South Africa has a strong racing culture, and that’s because racing is addictive: from the buzz when you line up in your chute, to the endorphin rush of riding fast, stamping out kilometres on an open road, to the sense of achievement when you cross the finish line knowing you went as hard as you could, to the ecstasy of the first sip of an ice-cold Coke a few moments later.

But invariably, at some point we become a bit jaded with competing, and the allure of the race loses a little of its shine. That’s when the tide drains away, and we’re faced with the ebbs.

During these ebb times, cycling is still important; but being on the bike is less about the thrill of racing, and more about the joy of riding.

When we suffer from racing burnout, cycling shifts – from training to achieve a future goal, to being more about the ‘now’, about ‘living in the moment’. Of course, the race pendulum swings back and forth; the motivation to race will inevitably return.