If you really want to get for cycling, my advice is not to train. This is true of so many sports, but is perhaps more true of cycling than any other single sport.
Let me explain…
Any sport or pastime which you do for the exercise’s sake, for fitness in other words, becomes a drudge for most people, most of the time. But when the exercise is incidental to the activity being performed, then the exercise and the fitness it brings is a beneficial and wholly welcome by-product.
If you think back to when you were a child, did you play football, tennis, rounders, or go cycling for that matter because you thought you’d get fitter? Or did you do it because you enjoyed it – or, in the case of cycling, because you wanted to get around under your own steam and visit places / get to where you needed to be etc.?
So if you set off on your bike with a determination to become leaner, meaner and fitter, you’re setting yourself up to fail just as many people do with New Year’s resolutions; they’re there to be broken.
On the other hand, if you use your bike to get to where you need to be, or to enjoy the countryside with friends and see new areas etc. as the primary motive, then your physical fitness will happen anyway. After all, physical fitness in its true sense comes as result of mental fitness. The only time this isn’t true is for the control freaks amongst us; and that’s not healthy.
So my advice is to enjoy the exercise for what it enables you to enjoy – and the fitness will just happen incidentally. In this way, it’s sustainable fitness. And if you’re doing it for the environment but need to get further than you can on two self-powered wheels, then Honda has introduced some pretty amazing eco cars over the years – none more so than the latest concept car, the micro commuter, unveiled at the Tokyo Motor show – which even has a mini electric bike in the boot. You’ll have to put your real one on the roof rack!