Good Habits / Bad Habits Cycling

Having a chat whilst Cycling

Clean the Bike

There is a law about cleaning your bike. Either you do it the moment you get in the house, or you leave it for later. If you leave it for later, of course, you never do. That is until the middle of January when the bike is so covered in layers of mud the brakes are no longer functioning. Then of course, you clean your bike and you get great joy from seeing it’s initial colour. Whenever you’ve cleaned your bike, you always make a promise that you will always keep it that clean. That is except your winter training bike, where you tell yourself a good winter training bike should always have several layers of mud – just in case anyone comes round and you need to prove that you have been riding in all conditions. (Cleaning your Bike)

Being Overtaken With Good Grace

Now, your plodding along Oxford High Street admiring the beautiful 15th Century architecture and then some young lady comes cycling past you on a £100 mountain bike from Asda. The gentlemanly thing is to admire her speed and remain unruffled by your contemplation of the late Gothic architecture. But, although, it’s absurd to think every cycle into town is some stage race in a mythical Tour of Britain, you can’t help but feel you need to prove you can ride faster than the good old lady or her decrepit Asda special. It’s the same with overtaking other people. How often do we get joy from overtaking people on a training ride then nervously look other our shoulder wondering when they are going to try and come an catch us up.
Greeting All Motorists with our Infinite Reserve of Patience and Compassion.
Your cycling along a busy road, when some impatient driver cuts you up forcing you into the gutter. Now the instinctive reaction is to wave an angry fist – denouncing his heinous crime with a range of expletives, but, the good cyclist is well trained to understand the driver can’t be expected to take other road users into consideration. It is far more important that the motorist squeeze past so he can be 10 seconds quicker to get into that forthcoming traffic jam. We brush off the incident with a mere quick thought of forgiveness and don’t spend the rest of the day ruminating over the callousness of other road users…
Excuses at the Ready.

Any cyclist worth his salt will have a range of excuses up his sleeve to explain why he didn’t train (been spending all his time researching which carbon fibre components to buy), why he has put on 2 stone (weight training), why he was slow in the race (10 pints the night before, no training in past 3 months, e.t.c) Similar to the ready excuse is the lack of training myth. -  If you do happen to do well in a race or cyclo sportive, you also have to convince everyone that it was done on a weekly base training of less than two hours a week.
Obeying all Road Laws.

Now of course, no-one else obeys all the road laws. We all know motorists flagrantly ignore speed limits, ignore red lights, pass too close e.t.c. Whatever the Jeremy Clarkson’s and Daily Mail columnists of this world say, cyclists are actually a very law abiding bunch. Always fully lit at night, never going through a red light (even when it is a pedestrian crossing and no-one is there), never riding on the pavement. Cyclists really are very law abiding, after all we hardly ever break the legal speed limit….

Reading cycling weekly in sweaty smelling cycling kit.

For some reason, Cycling weekly always arrives after I get back from a Thursday training ride. Now the sensible thing would be to shower, get changed and then read it. But, for some reason, I just have a quick glance and before I know it I’m rereading all those article on how to lose weight through cycling – as if it is something I need to do. The only good thing is that there is so little worth reading in cycling weekly, it only takes about 5 minutes. I always say I’ll go back later and read Tom, Dick and Harry’s amazing cycle sportive report, but of course I never do.