What do you think of when you think of a cyclist?
Someone who rides a bike – well yes, but what kind of bike?
Where do they ride?
Why do they ride?
For how long?
How fast?
What do they wear?
And there are so many other questions that you can ask yourself about what constitutes a cyclist.
What should a cyclist look like?
I know what I mean when I think about a cyclist who could come on one of our tours.
They should ride a road bike
They ride for fitness, exploration, discovery, and to challenge themselves
We ride in the alps (and dolomites)
They should be able to ride at least 4 hours per day (often longer)
We ride on average between 20km/h and 30km/h depending on the terrain
We wear lycra cycling clothing, helmets, sunglasses, mitts, clip in cycling shoes.
We’re not all so serious about cycling
But this is just one definition of a cyclist.
Which becomes apparent when I talk about the company to people who are not as serious about road biking as a lot of us are. Many people find it incredible to conceive of riding 90-120km day after day and climbing up over alpine cols.
On reflection I was the same way back in the early 2000s when I first encountered a serious road cyclist. Back when it wasn’t the popular sport in the UK that it became, and my colleague and good friend Simon used to tell us tales about how he’d ridden 100 miles on the weekend and how he’d been out to France to take part in the Étape du Tour. It was all completely crazy to the rest of us back then.
Copenhagen reflections
I was in Copenhagen this week and out of the hundreds if not thousands of cyclists I saw, I encountered only one (brave) man wearing summer lycra cycling kit on a road bike (it was around 0830 and about 1 degree centigrade!)
Every single other cyclist was on some version of a town bike, and I was impressed by the dedication that all these people had to getting around.
As I said, it was not warm, and I saw all manner of clothing to help protect them against the cold and make their cycling comfortable. My favourite was a kind of puffer onesie that some had pulled on over their work clothes – super practical and looked amazingly warm.
These Danes were all riding bikes but were so different from how I typically think about cycling and cyclists day to day. They were just using their bikes to get from A to B in the most efficient manner. And would do it seemingly whatever the weather.
I also saw the cycling police pulling people over and learnt that they regularly do spot checks to control whether people have lights on their bike, and whether the bikes are in working order. I saw someone on an e-bike (that looked more like a motorbike) get stopped and quizzed because they were riding on the bike path.
The infrastructure was amazing, and the care that pedestrians took when crossing cycle lanes was also noticeable. I guess you need to be bike aware when there are so many cyclists moving around at all times of day.
Safe to say that they are serious cyclists in Denmark – and it was a great reminder that a cyclist is so much more than shaved legs, lycra and a fast bike.
What I have been listening to while writing
Band of Horses – Cease to Begin
The opening track on this album is one of my all time favourites. Is There a Ghost is a classic indie anthem – starting super quiet before exploding into life. Pretty simple lyrics combined with a great melody and energy. Track 3 – No One’s Gonna Love You is also a terrific tune. Check out the album – you won’t regret it.
