As cycling’s popularity has increased, there has been a cultural shift away from fun and experiences towards a macho world of speed and Strava

I came across an interesting film the other day. It was linked from Sidetracked, a beautiful, outdoors lifestyle-y type magazine. The kind you buy in a bookshop rather than a newsagent, full of long-form journalism and photo essays, not product reviews and top 10 lists.



The video was of one woman, Lael Wilcox, talking about her experience cycling the Arizona Trail. She was racing, trying to get the best time, but on her own in a self-supported attempt.

It stood out because it was the first time I’ve found myself getting excited by cycling for a while. Something about the braveness of it, the risk, the crazy, epic mental-ness. Watch: it’s short and wonderful.

I’ve always liked cycling. Over the years, some of my favourite moments have been spent on a bike: going the distance, getting lost, finding myself in unexpected and beautiful places.

Cycling can be so adventurous. I always found something ramshackle and joyful in it. It’s a quick way to get about, but one where you feel entirely part of the environment you’re travelling through. You’re fast enough to see stuff, to not get bored of the same view and to get places, but slow enough to chat to anyone you’re with, to stop and say hi to people, to admire what’s around you.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fast Forward – Lael Wilcox takes on the Arizona Trail.

A couple of things have spoilt it for me.

One is, I hope, temporary: having children. It’s not to say I can’t cycle now I’m a dad, it’s just that either I have to take time away from my family to do it or take them with me. The latter is is great but doesn’t lend itself to the exciting and unplanned types of adventure I used to enjoy. But as they get older I’m looking forward to silly and slightly reckless trips en famille.

The second is, probably, more permanent: a shift in the culture. Cycling in the UK has changed massively in the past few years. Mostly for the better. Cycling as a mode of transport has really taken off in London, if not in all other places. It’s amazing. The infrastructure is improving beyond recognition. It’s incredible to see that cycling has become a normal, unquestioned part of so many people’s lives.

Unfortunately, the other side of cycling seems to have been ruined. Ten years ago I would have been proud to describe myself as a cyclist, still a slightly odd, marginal thing to do.

It was a world of peculiar achievement, of anoraks and curly cheese sandwiches eaten on forgotten B-road laybys. It was a world of Sheldon Brown, and tales of Sustrans cycle paths.

You could be a serious cyclist and go out in denim shorts, stop for a spliff and a thermos of tea on the top of Ditchling Beacon, try cycling to Southampton on a three-speed Pashley. All these things were fine, and fun, and if you talked to other cyclists about them there would be moments of recognition and joy at shared love and shared experience.

All the touring I’ve done, all the cyclists I’ve met, we never used to talk about pro cycling. Chatting about gear was about other stuff, slow and beautiful stuff, the comfort of steel, Brooks saddles (when they still cost £40). The physicality was an important part of it – these people were wiry, fit, slow climbers in low gears, capable of heroic achievements on rusting bikes, carrying too much camping gear, stashing too much wine for the evening’s pitch. Physicality but without explicit competition.

Sure, the road cyclists were there, but they were just one subculture of several which got along well with each other.

Now it’s different. Road cycling has become the orthodoxy. Tedious, competitive, sports cycling has taken over. Cycling has become the new golf. It’s what men of a certain age, men with money and power, chat about after meetings.

The focus has moved to sportives, to carbon fibre frames, to Rapha Sky-branded kits, to gels, training techniques, times, pace and cadence. The aspiration is no longer to get lost, to enjoy and to explore: the aspiration is to do stages of the Tour, watch races, spend more money, own the best stuff, be the quickest. And it bores the shit out of me.

So pervasive is this trend that it seems to be sucking the life out of other parts of cycling. It’s hard to find the hippies and the explorers any more. It’s all about the competition and the conformity.

A classic south London ride (over Crystal Palace, out to Oxted) has become a miserable slog of unsmiling, un-nodding pink and black Lycra-clad sports cyclists. There’s no bonhomie or camaraderie, just wrap-around glasses and steely determination to overtake.

And the chat is about bikes and times, Strava segments, with the same fervour dull men use to talk about football teams. People are less and less likely to talk about experiences, the things the’ve seen, the places they’ve been, the fun and epic hardship they’ve experienced. They’re less and less likely to talk about the joy of cycling. Again, it bores the shit out of me.

This sounds like a reactionary rant, and that’s because it is. I should be able to just let these people get on with it and live and let live, or even just take joy in the fact that there are so many more people who love cycling in any way they like.

But I can’t, and I have my reasons. First, I don’t like being looked down on. I don’t like being characterised as less of a cyclist because I can’t be arsed with sportives and would rather get lost than go hard.

Second, I think it pollutes the rest of the culture. This pernicious strand of macho sport orthodoxy is creeping into all parts of cycling. It’s starting to be the norm. Bike shops are geared towards it, bike blogs are geared towards it, conversations around cycling are geared towards it. You mention you like cycling, now that comes with an expectation that you are a certain type of person; alpha male, serious, competitive, buyer of bikes, regurgitator of facts.

Moreover, I worry that this fake professionalisation in leisure cycling hides the joy from people who might otherwise have got involved.

Third, it’s just another example of something lovely, free and non-corporate being turned into a mega industry. And that makes me sad. Can’t we have some things which don’t get packaged up, branded and marketed? Isn’t there any part of life where I can experience a freedom from corporatism without have my experience re-packaged and sold back to me?

Anyway back to Lael Wilcox. It is beautiful to see someone cycling competitively, cycling seriously, but with the passion for adventure, for challenge, for experience which has been lost from so many other parts of the culture.

It’s hard not to feel jealous of her hardship, of her joy, of the challenge she’s facing. She inspires me to think about cycling in the old way again.

There’s something adventurous, and crazy, and silly about what she’s doing. I would hope that some of her spirit comes back into cycling, some of the madness, some of the diversity, and while I hope that the road cyclists stick around, I also hope they become less the dominant force in cycling, and more just one voice amongst many others.