{"id":276168,"date":"2025-11-21T22:09:34","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T22:09:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/276168\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T22:09:34","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T22:09:34","slug":"heart-rate-cadence-power-so-what-let-us-enjoy-cycling-for-the-sake-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/276168\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Heart rate, cadence, power – so what?\u2019: Let us enjoy cycling for the sake of it"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, we ran a piece about someone rediscovering the love of cycling<\/a>. Without the shackles of heart-rate monitoring <\/a>and pace-setting, Sean Russell was able to enjoy the landscape around him in a way he couldn\u2019t when in pursuit of personal bests and training goals.<\/p>\n

He saw deer galloping in fields, and took time to enjoy the rolling hills. \u201cI looked down at my speed and saw it was just 23km\/h, and that was perfect,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n

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Russell\u2019s pursuit of the slow lane has struck a chord – though one commenter under his post, Blue (and I), still marvel at a 23km\/h average speed. It is something many agreed with.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt’s so easy to fall into the over competitive side of cycling,<\/a> and so important to get back to the roots of your motivation, that is, the joy of riding your bike in the countryside. Competition is fun, but it can become addictive and, ultimately, unhealthy,\u201d wrote Guido, another commenter. \u201cA good balance helps your cycling passion to stay sustainable in the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many people commenting on Russell\u2019s article too have been \u201cserious\u201d cyclists, reforming either because of age, or for a lost sense of joy that had become dislodged on long, hard training rides<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my early 70s, I favour something in between the leisurely ride and the all-out race, a ride that will keep me in shape without being overly strenuous,\u201d M. Bellefeuille wrote, noting that this balance-point allowed him to enjoy the spectacle of \u201cthe mighty St Lawrence River [in North America] as I ride along it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Another seasoned rider \u201cwith over 750km and hundreds of races in my legs\u201d counts the 23km\/h rides as the \u201cpinnacle of my cycling life!\u201d He, too, has kept hold of the simple joy of riding a bike outside. \u201c(Almost) every ride continues to be amazing, just like that first ride, many decades ago!\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s easy to fall into the delicious trap of chasing goals. It\u2019s easy, too, to forget that Strava is a kind of social media<\/a>, a tool to measure yourself not only against your previous workouts, but against the people you follow, and the friends you ride with. It\u2019s addictive, one commenter reminds us.<\/p>\n

\u201cA very important lesson in life is that there will always be someone better\/richer\/slimmer\/taller than you; it\u2019s a fool’s errand chasing the top spot,\u201d they wrote. \u201cRide your bike for yourself, not anyone else<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The people responding to Russell\u2019s story of lost and rekindled love met the article at different stages in their own journey with our sport. Some bolstered by the permission to go slower, to ride differently. Others, however, are at Russell\u2019s pain-point, when his desire to ride had fallen flat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t been riding for about six weeks now, and still don\u2019t feel any desire to do so,\u201d Sammy said. \u201cI hope that in time I will be able to go out on my bike and just enjoy the ride and not race my hardest every time . That would be great to ride under no pressure at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larry, on the other hand, taps out a comment, joy sparking: \u201cI was not much good at racing anyway so why was I ruining a nice ride? If it wasn’t fun why do it? I still overdid things despite not racing and am paying the price but with e-bike <\/a>now I can have fun without worrying about making my heart issues worse<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

One seasoned time triallist pitched in, swapping Garmin-<\/a>monitored summer training sessions with off-season rides designed purely with enjoyment in mind: \u201cheart rate, cadence, power \u2013 so what?\u201d<\/p>\n

So, shake off the shackles of fast, tough training rides, fellow cyclists! Regain the joy of riding, and then maybe stick a tracker in your back pocket and see how you feel.<\/p>\n

The goal is – for me anyway – to be like one of the commenters under the original article, for every ride to feel like the first, but mostly just to maintain the pleasure of cycling, no matter how hard you decide to push yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week, we ran a piece about someone rediscovering the love of cycling. Without the shackles of heart-rate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-276168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}