My passion for cycling
I’ve been asked by a very good colleague of mine to write a post on my passion for cycling and where it comes from. It is interesting how I may seem to be an avid cyclist nowadays, when it was not always the case, actually, on the contrary. Would my friends who know me for completing various cycling challenges, with the latest Tour de Stations with over 9000 meters of elevation on 250km distance, expect me to both hate the bike and be overweight when I was younger? Would you? How did I get here and what the bike means for me nowadays?
The story begins in my childhood, as it often does :) I still remember cruising on our bikes at our grandparents, how easy and fun it always was with our friends there. We all took our fairly old and creaky bikes and owned the roads in the village… Hmmm what a memory. If we fast-forward the time a bit, you can find me sitting at my desk, in my room, at my PC and, you guessed it, playing games. While I do not look with regrets on that time, for cycling it was not a particularly glorious one. I can vividly see that one time when our father took us out for a ride. We got out, slightly older, on slightly newer bikes and we headed straight for a hill we called, imaginatively, “deadly”. In the early teens it felt like riding into a wall, so steep, even zigzagging did not really help. I don’t remember the rest of the route we took, I only know this was a last time I have touched a bike for quite a time. To be honest, I guess even without that experience, I probably would not go cycling very often, but still, please be kind to whoever you want to teach the passion for cycling, start slowly and make it fun :)
I have to give credits to my wife for getting me back on the two wheels. It was not an easy start and I was barely able to hold her wheel, but a passion slowly started to find its way into my heart. The fire in my soul was ignited the day I took on a challenge which seemed totally crazy to all around me at the time. I’ve registered for the Czechman triathlon: 1,9km swimming 90km bike and 21km run. To get myself ready for it, I’ve started to listen to Purple Patch podcast, got my first indoor rollers for riding my bike indoors in a winter, got back to swimming and started to run. When the day came, fortunately I had my wife and friends supporting me and even through it was bloody hard, we all were amazed when I got to the finish and, well, I was not exhausted, I actually felt pretty good. From then, the passion for training and sports started to grow.
With Covid restraining our movement outside of our homes, I’ve doubled down on cycling. One day I’ve seen a video from the Global Cycling Network presenting The Tour des Stations in Switzerland, cycling Everesting event and from then, I could not get it out of my head. I’ve been able to train for it under the Purple Patch Tri Squad program and with the slow increase of the length of my rides to just over 250km in one day, it started to look achievable. You know how amazing it actually feels to be on the bike for the whole day ? The freedom, the views, the coffee and cakes :D, the people you meet. That combined with multi-day trips we took with my wife, carrying all we need on our bikes, that is what nurtured the cycling passion in me.
Today, I try to ride when I can, either outdoor and if not possible, indoors. I always look for a new cycling challenge to ride, not to win against others, but to fight my own natural laziness. And, because we should not only think about ourselves and there was a lot of me and “I” in the whole article, I do also donate to World Bicycle Relief to bring bikes to places where they change lives. While cycling is not an answer to all the questions, it surely makes our life a little bit better, more active and mindful :)
