QUESTION: How can I motivate myself to ride further? I’ve lost some fitness, and I find myself struggling on group rides and get dropped a lot because I’m not riding as many miles. When I find myself out on a ride, I end up talking myself out of continuing and going home early, which is not helping my fitness any. – Jack R
RBR’S STAN PURDUM REPLIES: Loss of motivation to ride can spring from all sorts of disturbances that may or may not have anything to do with cycling itself. For example, if you are dealing with high stress, overwork or anxiety, or have slipped into depression, motivation loss is almost par for the course. So a good first step is to look at your overall situation to see if some self-care or remedial practices are needed. Also, consider whether any medicines you are taking might be affecting your mood.
I once found myself suddenly uninterested in riding, and while puzzling over that, the only new thing in my life I could think of was a medication my doctor had recommended I try for a chronic condition. Thinking further about it, I also realized I was depressed, something quite unusual for me. So I stopped the medication and after a couple of days, the depression cleared and the zest for cycling returned. Thinking that connecting depression to the medicine might just be a coincidence, I waited a couple more days and then restarted the pills — and the depression returned. So I talked to my doctor, and he switched me to a different med that didn’t have the depressive effect. Actually, “depression” was not a listed side effect of the first med either, but it had that effect on me.
But loss of motivation sometimes seems to have no obvious cause. Assuming that may be the case for you, I suggest you temporarily narrow your goals and work on one. You’ve mentioned concern about loss of fitness, about getting dropped on group rides and about cutting your rides short. That’s three goals. I suggest picking the cutting-rides-short concern, since that underlies both the other goals.
Next, think about what causes you to pull out early. Are you picking routes that are too long or too aggressive for how you are feeling now? Are you bored with the routes? Are you getting demoralized because you used to enjoy those routes but now don’t? Whatever the reason, do a reset of this goal. Rather than determining to complete route X, substitute a flexible goal for the week. For example, you might plan to ride twice a week for a total of three hours. So if you cut the first one short, you stretch the next one a bit.
Do whatever you can to eliminate excuses to shortcut the rides. You might, for instance, pick a time when there’s no reason you must be home by a certain hour. Pick a day when you are not likely to get rained out. Avoid the route that has a dreaded killer hill, and so on
These reset goals don’t have to be forever, and if you’re on the ride and are inspired to extend it, go ahead. But give yourself some room and some time to get past the motivation slump.
Here is some good stuff on motivation from cycling coach Arnie Baker, M.D.
Stan Purdum has ridden several long-distance bike trips, including an across-America ride recounted in his book Roll Around Heaven All Day, and a trek on U.S. 62, from Niagara Falls, New York, to El Paso, Texas, the subject of his book Playing in Traffic. Stan, a freelance writer and editor, lives in Ohio. See more at www.StanPurdum.com.
I left group rides where the pace was not my pace behind a few years ago. Was I having fun? I was not having fun and often all I saw was the wheel of the rider in front of me. Solo or a group of two is a good size group for getting the most pleasure on the bike ride, admittedly it is hard to find the perfectly compatible ride partner (too slow/too fast, too serious/not serious enough, long breaks/no breaks,, talk too much/don’t talk enough, etc. )
I am fortunate to have a country road region nearby that has a lot of safe quiet scenic roads that offer me lots of route flexibility and scenic pleasure.
Cycling-ride guide books helped me discover new regions and rides. Hard to quit when you’re in the middle of the ride route far from the start/finish.
I also made some improvements to comfort on the bike. I changed the seat and did some upper body fitness improvements. These made a very big difference to my overall enjoyment.
I do the vast majority of my rides solo, but I do have a regular weekly group ride and a few riding companions I can sometimes get to come along on weekends. I don’t mind the long solo rides (I solve all the worlds’ problems nearly every week) but having somebody to talk to at the break or just when riding along makes for a pleasure too. I don’t have any riding goals other than just to ride, so not meeting goals is not a stressor for me. To get away from being overly goal-focused, try getting rid of your bike computer.
That is a very good point. In my transition away from speed-focused sport rider into fun- and joy-focused sport rider I did get rid of all my bikes’ bike computers.
Now I measure a ride by how many times I say “wow this is nice!” and if I want to do that ride again (and again). I realized it was more fun to ride a bike “for fun” and not as a data-generating metric-focused goal-setting and task-achievement activity. It’s the whole “don’t turn fun into another version of work” thing.
I have nothing against that type of riding, but I realized for me personally I wanted recreation to be something more than achieving a number on a screen. I also once missed a turn because I was looking at the bike computer instead of the world around me. That was insightful! It is also interesting and rewarding to use and grow the human skill of geographic memory, navigation, and exploration (not using gps on a screen). I enjoy this a lot. Since 2000 I have been on a kind of a quest to find the best road-bike roads in Quebec (ie within 1-2 hours of Montreal) where I live and to ride those roads and find more roads like that. After ten years I had found many great rides and now I/we just do great rides. I can go on at length about this lol and am working on a guidebook project.