How Do You Keep it Fun?

My recent post about what it means to be a serious rider spurred some interesting comments from reader Dave (scroll down at the original post, linked above, for the comments) about how to keep riding fun. It got me thinking about the tricks I use. I’m going to post a couple, and then I’m going to ask you to use the comments link, at the bottom of this post, to add your ideas to the list. Do you ever hit the doldrums with your riding? What do you do for it? Without further ado, some ways that I keep it fun:

• Remove the cyclocomputer from my bike (sacrilege!) and go for a ride just to go for a ride – for ice cream, to see the top of a local hill, to explore a new neighborhood.

• If I can’t stand the idea of losing track of my miles, I’ll cut down a Post-it note to stick over my cyclocomputer display while I ride. Depending on my mood, I’ll use one of two kinds of Post-its: a) those tiny page-saving rectangles. If I cut off all but the sticky part, it fits right over the speedometer portion of my display, but I can still view other stats – which I restrict to either total time or total miles, basic info that I can’t use to push myself too much; b) Other times, I don’t want to see any info while I ride, but I still want to track my data. At those times, I cut out a larger Post-it to cover my whole display (leaving in the sticky part to hold the note on the display). Costs nearly nothing; works like a charm. A word of warning: Just knowing that my data is being tracked can push me to ride too hard. Sometimes it's just better to leave the computer at home.

• Take a couple days -- or more -- off the bike altogether. When I first started riding last year, this seemed impossible. I had to ride my standard six days a week. These days, I ride more like four or five. (Not everyone is lucky enough to have that much riding time; I just finished grad school and still haven't found a job, so my schedule has been flexible). These days, I try to take one week out of every four or five to chill out. During these breaks, I ride less mileage on fewer days. Or I'll plan a week off around a long weekend away with my wife -- that way, we get a chunk of quality time together. (I'm often far away on the bike during her days off, or in the basement adjusting on my derailleur, etc.) As these breaks approach, I often feel apprehensive, like I will lose something precious without my riding days. But frequently I have my best riding weeks ever after a break like this. The body and mind become so refreshed by a break from my daily obsession.
  

OK. I know this is a relatively new blog and doesn't have a ton of readers. But there are definitely a handful of you who come daily. It would be great fun to hear from you.

I know some people are a little leery of commenting on a public blog, but rest assured: You do not have to be a Blogger member, and you can simply click on the Anonymous button to submit your comments without any identifying info at all. (You might want to also click the button that will send you updates, because then you can keep track of the conversation.)

OK, so – how do you keep it fun?

Are You Serious?

How serious a rider are you?

No, really: I mean this question quite genuinely. How serious are you?

I hear you ask, “Well, how should we judge that?”

Well, how about this: Do you count your miles in a ride log? Do you keep a cycling computer connected to your bicycle? Do you worry about whether your jersey matches the color scheme of your bike?

Are you a triathlete, duathlete, monathlete, or just a half-lete? Can you ride 100 miles? 50? 10? Are you one of those superhuman folks who can reel off two or three hundred in one go? Does that make you a more serious rider than the gal next door, who just finished her first 20-mile ride ever yesterday, and is telling everyone she knows? Is she serious enough?

It seems to me there are as many kinds of riders as there are actual riders. Dividing them up into serious and not is pretty absurd. Yet I – and most of my friends – do it every single day. It's rampant in road biking culture, in fact. In the guise of just sharing a good road story, guys will tell, with unimpeachable humility, of that time last week when they got caught in some jam and had to ride an extra 60 miles in withering heat, on top of their normal century, due to (fill in the blank). But, shucks -- t'weren't nothin'.

Speaking for myself:

I spend a lot of time shopping for that right jersey. I finally bought a nifty one at a good price yesterday, having shopped for weeks. I also shopped for weeks for water bottles that set off my bike’s color scheme – now that I have them, I think the overall effect is dangerously cool, actually. I occasionally catch myself admiring my new body in the mirror when I’m all done up in biking shorts and a sleek, colorful jersey. I love my new, highly-defined quads and my widening calves and shrinking body fat percentage.

I’ve done the base miles, the hill repeats, the intervals, the hundreds of hours on the rollers to improve my form, the heart rate zones, the calorie counting, the stretches, the recovery drinks. I have read every technical cycling book in two local public libraries, and I’m currently working on a third. And I’m teaching myself to fix my own bike.

Now: Am I a serious cyclist?

See, here’s the rub: The more serious I became about my cycling experience, the more impoverished it became.

Any and all of the pastimes above can be great fun; stress-reducing, joyful, healthy, creative. Or they can be one more way to feel like I am not quite enough. There are days when I compare myself to every rider I see on the road, or compare my stats to those of my veteran friends on the Internet cycling forums. Needless to say, on those days, I don’t come out well in the comparison. On the days when I’m really enjoying myself, I don’t compare – I’m just plain happy for every person I see out on a bike, whether beginner, pro or in-between.

So, in order to not self-destruct my cycling passion, I began to work on distinguishing between the kinds of priorities that help and those that hurt. Here’s what I came up with: If I am enjoying myself, it’s helpful. If I’m not, it’s hurtful.

Pretty fancy, huh?

Note that enjoying myself can take many forms. On many days, it’s long, grueling effort and pushing past personal records. Especially if I'm doing that for my own reasons. But even then, I have to mix in some riding just to ride – to enjoy the sunshine, to see the wind in the grass, to have an adventure someplace new, to get the feeling of flying that comes over me on long, flat stretches, when I hit that rolling groove, and time and mind slip away. When I was a kid on that shiny new red bike, I didn't ride to look better than my friend. I rode because riding rocks.

Above all, I have to avoid comparing myself to other riders. I find that ridiculously tricky, although the more months of riding I string together, the easier it gets. After all, if I’m still cycling now, it’s got to be because I found something I hold dear, something real.

The trick answer to the trick question, “Am I a serious rider?” is no – because being serious is the wrong goal for me. It’s a trap. It hangs its hat on the wrong hook: What do/would others think of my mileage, my kit, my bike, my wins? If you think about it for 15 seconds, that becomes an utterly pointless question, spiralling back in on itself. However, precisely because it’s pointless, it suddenly becomes very dangerous when I invest it with importance, with priority. If being taken seriously is your goal, well, take it from me: You can never get enough. If, however, I can manage to truly take the enjoyment credo to heart, make it my engine of growth, I can look forward to many more years of true velophoria.

So, tell me: Are you serious?

Having Fun vs. Winning: At Odds?

I’m doing triathlon because I love it and because it’s fun, and not because I want to win it in every case. I know that Americans, they say “Oh, second [place] is the first loser,” and “You don’t win silver, you lose gold.” But for me, really, the most important thing is the fun and not the win.

- Faris Al-Sultan, 2005 Ironman Triathlon World Champion, interviewed on The Competitors radio show