Why Is Bicycling the Best?

First I was a runner. 

I was decent enough but not particularly talented at most sports – basketball, baseball, and tennis mostly. I quit soccer less than halfway into my first season. 

I wasn’t a super talented runner either but was good enough in high school to letter in cross country and track.  I broke 5 minutes in the mile a few times and I was proud of that. I could always run.

Meanwhile, an American, Greg LeMond, was winning the Tour de France in 1986 and in 1989LeMond's come from behind 1989 victory in the last stage to win the Tour by 7 seconds is all timer sporting moment. He even got an SI Sportsman of the Year win out of it. -90.   My Mom and I followed his victories.  Inspired, I asked for a road bike for my high school graduation to replace my old 10 speed bike I bought with my paper route money in 6th grade. Though I returned to running a few times in college and law school, I never stopped biking.  

I’ve commuted to work by bike a few times a week since 2001.  I did my first century ride in 2002 and even joined a local racing team for a few years.  I’ve been riding between 4 and 5K miles (almost 6K ! in pandemic year 2020) a year for a while and hope to keep riding as long as I can keep my balance.

Why Is Cycling So Great?

Low Impact.  I’ve been fortunate, but so far, I have never had a bicycle-related injury.  (Big caveat here, as I’ll note below, that this doesn’t include crashes.)   As a former runner, even as a teenage high schooler, there was nearly always something hurting. Some nagging injury that I could run through but annoyed me. Ankle, knee, shin splints, my hip once. 

That’s far less common with cycling. When I chat with other cyclists, there is much discussion about many topics, but very little about cycling-derived maladies. 

You can see so much.  At the risk of making this is a “why running stinks” article, another thing I immediately loved about cycling was how much farther you can go.  With running, you’re kind of limited to a range of a few miles from your house.  

But on a bike, I’ve explored the entire DC area on rides.  As one small example, I’ve done the first-rate 50 States ride route where you cycle into seemingly every corner of DC to visit all 50 streets named after US states.   

I’ve also done guided bike expeditions in or around Pureora Forest, New Zealand; Panajachel, Guatemala; Tblisi, Georgia; and Canyonlands NP, Utah.  What a fun way to explore a beautiful place, meet new people, and, most importantly, burn a ton of calories and then eat good food at the end of the day. 

Great tourist fun.  Related to “see lots of stuff on a bike” above, when visiting a new place, I often try to rent a bike.  The first thing I look for is a bikeshare program (Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Frankfurt, Sydney, to name a few). If not, I might try to rent a bike for a day (Charleston, Pensacola, and Siem Reap).  In fact, if I can’t easily get around by bike in a city, that is a strike against the city to me.

On a bike, you can see a lot of city and area in less time. You don’t have to worry about parking, you get some exercise, and you get to feel more like a local than a tourist.  And you can bicycle almost anywhere in the world.

Health benefits.  Maybe this should be #1.  Any exercise is good and cycling is a great one.  A bicycle ride can be an intense anaerobic interval workout or a long, aerobic ride or anything in between.   For me, cycling is an exercise that I look forward to and enjoy doing.    

Smooth speed is fun. I love the feeling of speeding along a paved road on my bike.  On a road bike, most people can get up to 15 mph without much trouble on a flat road or trail.  Or just pedal along easily at 10 mph.  Whatever you want. 

Slower speed (or not so slow) on mountain bikes is also fun.  Or on gravel.  Or on a beach boardwalk.  It’s all fun. On the exercise trails near my house, cyclists are often smiling, calling out to their friends.  Runners are grimacing.

Group Rides. After several years of going fast by myself, I tried some century and group rides. It opened my eyes.  It’s exhilarating being in a group of experienced cyclists.  The aerodynamics of the group or paceline increase your speed without any extra effort. 

Saturday morning group rides are now an almost weekly highlight.  On these rides, we are easily moving among each other, wordlessly rotating through a paceline, maneuvering for position, and sometimes competing to be the quickest up the hill.  After the ride, pleasantly tired, we share stories, eat pizza, or pastries, or both, then slowly ride home. 

And there you have it.  Bicycling is awesome.  Healthy, fun, exhilarating, seeing new places.  

Case closed? 

Well, there are a few downsides.   

The Cons

Cyclists are jerks. Not me personally. Hopefully.  But many cyclists, especially in groups, can be inconsiderate.  Wearing their stupid, colorful, Lance Armstrong-wanna-be outfits while running stop signs and red lights.  Passing people too close and too fast on exercise trails.  Bullies! 

Crashing.  There is a danger element to cycling that is mostly absent from, say, running.  A cyclist can reduce their crash risk by not riding at night (or using lots of lights if they do), not doing stupid things on the road, and being situationally aware, especially when approaching intersections.   

But, the reality is you can do everything right and still get hit by a car. It can be a minor incident, but sometimes it’s devastating. You can even die. 

Fortunately, most crashes in cycling happen without any extra help from a car.  Again, even if you do everything right, you could accidentally get tangled up with another rider or, like me, blow out your front tire on a rock hidden in the shadows and go down.  You may not get seriously hurt and you won’t die, but when you hit the ground, your body is going to feel it– often some road rash and/or deeper cuts and bruises. Sometimes even broken bones.   

In 40-some years of riding, I’ve hit the ground at least a dozen times. Fortunately, only two incidents resulted in lasting trauma.  The first was a broken foot from an unlucky 1mph rolling-off-a-DC-curb incident.  And the other is the aforementioned tire blowout from a rock, which resulted in crashing into a ditch, slicing up my face (7 stitches total) and gouging the side of my knee so badly (8 staples from the ER) that I needed an ambulance. It looked like I’d taken a lathe to it. 

Expense.  Cycling can be a great value.  Get a bike, maybe even a used one from Facebook Marketplace, and ride it a lot.  You’re good to go.  Fun and healthy!   

However, most cyclists end up going deeper.  Way deeper. Somebody is buying those $10K+ magical carbon fiber bicycles.   

Besides the bike, good cycling equipment – the clothes, the pedals, helmets, computers and HR monitors, tires, water bottles, gloves, pumps, and more and more –  is not cheap.  Much of it is foreign made and the recent, pointless tariffs have made it worse.  I bought a $110 German made tire a few months ago (I had a 50% discount from the shop, but still . . .$110?)        

I will say that you usually get good value in cycling equipment. I’ve got clothes from 10-12 years ago that remain in good condition and I still wear them.  My single favorite article of cycling clothing is an Italian-made winter jacket. It was pricy, even on sale, but when the temperature drops into the 30s and below, this jacket is worth every dollar. 

I love how the jacket is tight in the wrong places when I stand, but as soon as I mount my bike and lean over the handlebars, it settles in just right. Just like bicycling and me.