Cycling mistakes that held me back
I carried on as a beginner for years
It’s been over 10 years since I brought cycling into my adult life, and while I have been quite the regular throughout, I remained complacent with beginner mistakes and a rookie mindset for several years.
Some of these are going to sound like common sense for a lot of people, but it’s possible that some cyclists, like myself, just don’t see the forest for the trees when they’re experiencing it.
For the impatient, you can skip to the bottom for the key TL;DR takeaways.
Poor nutrition and hydration
A simple way to explain electrolytes, is that they are minerals in your blood which help your muscles expand and contract properly.
I had this poor habit of not eating anything all morning, usually skip lunch, and then going for a ride in the afternoon with just a single bottle of water — not even electrolyte water. This was mostly “fine” for 30–40 km rides with 600–700 ft elevation and average a speed of ~21 km/h. However, it was not sustainable when I worked towards longer rides.
For more years than I’d like to admit, I’d go for poorly-fuelled rides and wonder why my muscles would tighten, become more inefficient with each pedal stroke and eventually seize up or spasm. My muscles would sometimes stay tight for weeks, despite stretching and massaging. I’d be able to do 60-80 km rides at a decent speed, but I was running my body into the ground by giving it nothing and demanding everything I could from it.
What works for many, is to load up on carbohydrates for supper the day before a long ride, and eat again in the morning a few hours before your ride. And also bring snacks, energy gels, and electrolyte mixture for your water to consume during your ride.
A simple way to explain electrolytes, is that they are minerals in your blood which help your muscles expand and contract properly. Not only do you lose a lot of this through sweat, but your blood also thickens as you get dehydrated, making it harder to deliver these minerals to your muscles. Therefore electrolyte drink is key for peak performance. Though regular water should be fine for shorter exercises.
After a big ride, you should eat again very soon, and try to consume foods containing protein to help re-build your muscles.
Overtraining or overuse
My body will eventually adapt to the workload, I thought.
One day I changed jobs and my commute went from 15 minutes each way, to a 180 km work week into another city (though I always skipped a day or two). Before that job, I had plenty of energy for big weekend rides — the weekday commutes were only a teaser. After taking the new job, I needed most weekends for rest.
I had a hard time adjusting to my new routine. A single day was easy, but each subsequent day made me feel weaker than the last. For a while, I didn’t quite get it: training is supposed to make you stronger. My body will eventually adapt to the workload, I thought, but 2 years went by and I was still weak.
Your muscles only repair stronger after you give them time and nutrients to re-generate. I already knew this from weight training in my younger years, but I didn’t consider it in cycling which I had (falsely) seen as “mostly cardio”.
All of this was exacerbated by needing adjustments in my bike fit, which is something I highly recommend cyclists do if cycling is causing pain. Even with a proper bike fit though, overtraining your muscles will be hard on the body — and can even affect your fitting due to prolonged tightness and flexibility issues.
Pacing
..wearing myself out trying to push both further and faster at the same time.
During the period of going from 1–2 hour rides, transitioning to 4–6 hour rides, I was still trying to maintain the same average speed and intensity.
This sounds reasonably practical: set a distance goal, and gradually work towards it at a sustainable pace, not worrying about speed or how long it will take. The more times you do it, the better at it you will get, and soon you’ll be doing big rides at impressive average speeds.
I did it quite backwards. I spent way too much time overtraining and wearing myself out trying to push both further and faster at the same time. I eventually reached my goal but it took a couple of years and many recurring injuries from muscle overuse.
If you want to increase both your speed and your distance, you should work on them in separate training sessions for power and endurance, respectively. Or if you’re serious about your training, consult a coach on how to best reach your goals without injury.
Comfort zone
Exploration is exciting, but as a solo cyclist, sometimes the thought of doing it is also anxiety-inducing.
With 4 cities directly bordering mine, and even more bordering some of those, I spent probably 90% of my rides in only 2 cities. It’s nice that your familiar go-to routes become your stomping grounds, but once you stop exploring, you can fall into a rut.
Out of over 20,000 km ridden in and around my city, the vast majority of them take place on a handful of routes. Repeating the same routes hundreds of times can get complacent, and doing reverse routes, or having 6 variations of the same route also gets old pretty quickly. It got so monotonous, that I considered giving up riding altogether.
Exploration is exciting, but as a solo cyclist, sometimes the thought of doing it is also anxiety-inducing. You never know when a bike “route” is going to end and dump you into a hostile road or highway with a poor shoulder lane. A lot of the time when that does happen, it’s manageable and I’ve never been put in immediate danger — just needs extra caution. Exploration helps you learn to deal with different kinds of roads and gain life-preserving experience.
Sometimes it’s not as bad as the maps or satellite view (or even youtube footage) makes it out to be. Reach out and ask other cyclists if you’re unsure. An answer I’ve seen pop up a few times is to use Strava Heatmaps to show which routes are most commonly used.
Comparing myself to others
..I always had unrealistic goals in the back of my head based on what other people can do.
At one point, most of my friends and colleagues on Strava can ride faster and longer than I ever could. It was inspiring and encouraging to look at their posts, but their stats have nothing to do with my abilities.
Many of us have that one friend who will casually post a 120 km ride with 3,600 ft elevation at average speed of 29 km/h — and do something like this every weekend or so. There were so many factors that would put me so far away from achieving this, but I didn't yet know what most of those factors were.
I definitely wasn’t obsessed with others; I was quite more focused on myself, but I always had unrealistic goals in the back of my head based on what other people can do. Combined with struggling through all the aforementioned problems, this was not healthy for me.
I still peek at other peoples’ stats nowadays, but with more of a curiosity than an ideal.
Being too cool to wear a helmet
If you cycle often enough, it’s only a matter of time before you have a crash…
Many of us enjoy having nice, presentable hair or fashionable headwear, and wearing a helmet is grossly counteractive to this goal. I fully appreciate the effort and pride that people put into their aesthetic when they present themselves to the public, but in the case of a bike crash, the laws of physics don’t care how good you look.
For the first few years of cycling, I didn’t care much if I forgot my helmet at home. Eventually, I had a couple of crashes that could have ended me, if it weren’t for miraculous acrobatics that prevented my head from making contact with the concrete. Let’s just say I’d rather not see if I can cheat death (or at least serious brain injury) a 3rd time.
If you cycle often enough, it’s only a matter of time before you have a crash — either self-inflicted by misjudgement, or by doing everything right and something else out of your control going wrong.
Road cycling apparel makes you look like a #$@!
It took me about 6 years to finally accept padded lycra shorts and jerseys…
Excuse the vulgarity that I made you imagine, but this mindset is indeed just as vulgar, if not worse. The attitude of hating on cyclists (including self-hate) for what they wear is very mainstream, but it can be very damaging — not only to cyclists but also to people who want to pick up cycling.
I’ve lurked around on social media enough to find dozens of posts, and hundreds of comments, that encourage people to harass or assault cyclists on the road. And according to many commenters, this sentiment apparently justified, partially because of what the cyclist is wearing.
“That’s what you get for wearing lycra” — we live in a world where it’s a stigma to wear cycling attire whilst riding a bicycle.
While probably most of them are just joking “in good fun”, the psychopaths who actually try to run us off the road or coal roll us are probably feeling emboldened by such comments. Aside from the societal damage from contributnig to this collective toxic mindset, there is also a direct consequence to the rider.
I have ruined several hundreds of dollars worth of blue jeans over the years, which have ripped at the crotch due to stress from the saddle area. Also, sweating in office clothes or street clothes, then having to continue wearing it over the next few hours is much less comfortable than sweating in lycra and changing afterwards. The former feels downright disgusting in comparison.
It took me about 6 years to finally accept padded lycra shorts and jerseys, with their super-convenient back pockets, might I add — all because of image issues that society projects onto people. I missed out.
Final thoughts
If you look at all of my mistakes, you can probably tell that there are a couple of issues I struggled with that shouldn’t have been as big a problem.
Firstly, I could have easily looked this stuff up instead of learning the hard way. There is a wealth of information about cycling out there, but you have to be willing to dig into it. It took me 8 years before joining online communities for cycling. That’s 8 years that could have been better spent.
Secondly, ego played a large part. When it’s not worrying about looking stupid, it’s about wanting to become better at cycling, but using poor assumptions, estimations and benchmarks.
Key Takeaways
- Eat before (carbs), during (sugars), and after (protein) your rides
- Constantly hydrate during the ride
- Replenish electrolytes lost through sweat
- Get proper rest between rides
- Stretch everyday
- Get a bike fit (if cycling is painful)
- Pace yourself
- When you get too comfortable, explore new roads
- You will eventually crash — how bad it is could come down to the helmet
- Bashing cycling wear perpetuates intolerance, overlooks its usefulness