Stop at A nothing

A sound routine makes for happy riders, but what happens when life forces us to shift gear? We meet three cyclists who had to rethink their riding when their situations changed

JULES RICHARDS, 39, started cycling to get fit for a marathon after breaking his back. Quickly progressing to JOGLE and long-distance triathlon, he had to reduce his training time when he became a father and changed career in quick succession.

"I grew up in Cornwall, so surfing and skateboarding were my thing. It wasn't until I broke my back snowboarding in 2001 that I started exercising to keep myself healthy. In my mid-20s, I came out of hospital after having my back brace removed to find I'd got into the London Marathon, so I started training on stationary bikes.

"After the marathon, I got into triathlon, so that's when I bought my first road bike. The following year, in 2008, I attempted the ride from John O'Groats to Land's End with friends to raise money for charity. I worked for an oil field company at the time and the job allowed me to work around my training.

"When I moved to Bristol, I retrained as a personal trainer and my own exercise had to take a back seat, so my training wasn't very structured. After my first child was born, I realised the sporadic working hours of a personal trainer didn't work with family life (I was up at five in the morning, out the door to train other people, then often quieter in the middle of the day, then working again from 5-10pm). I looked for something that would fit better. A client was a deputy head and she said she thought I'd be a great teacher, so it went from there.

"I started my PGCE course when my eldest daughter was 10 months old. I felt that, with a more structured timetable, as long as I knew what my training was going to be and communicated with my other half Zoe, it could become easier. I now work my training sessions around things we're doing as a family - if we're going down to the coast and I've got a long ride to do, we'll take the bike and I'll ride back.