Mindfulness for the cyclist

How it could help you pedal a little lighter

Sometimes cycling is easy. You feel good, you find a rhythm and you fly. But sometimes, with exactly the same routine on a different day, it’s really hard work. Your legs feel heavy and when you round a corner to find a hill looming in the distance, your heart sinks. You’re not sure why, but your head just isn’t in it.

On my 3-month cycling tour of the West Coast of America, I experienced these ups and downs all the time. And one day, fed up with feeling fed up, I got thinking about ways to shift my mental attitude to my ride. I’d used mindfulness before when working in a stressful City job. But out on the road, where I felt more relaxed than I had in years, it hadn’t occurred to me that the same techniques might be useful.

So I decided to experiment by applying some of the principles of mindfulness to my riding. Simply put, mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to the present moment without judgement. And almost overnight, it completely transformed my ride.

Here are 3 easy ways you can use mindfulness to ride a little lighter:

Stop worrying about what’s ahead of you

It’s easy to kilometer-count when you’re on a long ride, especially when your Garmin is right under your nose. “60 km to go, that’s about 3 more hours. But that includes 2000m of climbing. Including that massive hill near the end. Crap, that’s going to be disgusting.”

This internal monologue takes you away from the current moment to a realm of intimidating hardships which may or may not be real. So try to stop thinking about the road ahead and allow yourself to concentrate only on your present terrain. Ever tried riding over hills in fog or in the dark? It’s a whole lot easier, and that’s because you can’t worry about that lump on the horizon until you’re flying up it.

Tune into your surroundings

Concentrating on the present moment can be easier said that done. But it’s surprisingly simple when you put your mind to it on a bicycle, because of your proximity to your surroundings. Use all your senses to get right into the landscape around you.

Make an effort to feel the bicycle beneath you — your fingers on the bar tape and the connection between your feet and your pedals. Listen to the melodies in the sound of your tyres crunching on asphalt or gravel. Watch the birds travelling with you. Inhale the aroma of the landscape around you. Tiny moments will become magical and remind you why you are on your bicycle.

Shower yourself with kindness

Cycling is hard enough without telling yourself you can’t do it. Notice when your internal self-critic pops her head up and have a go at drowning her out with kindness.

For me, that moment is usually just before a hill. So as soon as I am heading up a decent grade, I tell myself “You’re doing so well” and “See? This isn’t even that hard” and “Wow I’m so impressed, you’re killing it!” It works wonders and has become such a habit that I don’t even have to try to find that voice anymore, it just pops up as soon as I start to climb. Crazy as it sounds, hills are now my happiest place.