Training

If you have a burning need to ride your bike for charity it seems your options are virtually limitless. There are more bike rides going on around the country than you can imagine; all raising money for various charities, and over various distances and challenges. Whether you fancy riding the streets of London at night or visiting every one of London’s football grounds then there’s a ride out there for you.

Get involved with one and then you can start claiming that your commute is “training”. This somehow makes it all sound a bit more glamorous and important, as opposed to just riding to work. With your head down and an eye on the clock you can claim you’re riding intervals between traffic lights and it means you no longer have to pretend to enjoy it. Training isn’t fun, you see, it’s essential. And you’re conditioning your body for a further challenge that you also should make sure you don’t actually enjoy. If you’re enjoying the ride then it’s probably “junk miles” and you’d be better off in the gym. You should certainly never just scoot out on a bike to play on a small set of jumps, or just to take the route to the shops which includes that nice bit of banked brickwork which cries out for a wall-ride. It’ll teach you nothing and you might come home smiling, which is, obviously, bad.

In your intensive training regime you’ll need to know how many miles you’re doing and how fast so you’ll probably want to run out and burn your credit card on an incredibly expensive cycle computer that’ll tell you what’s going to happen on Tuesday next week. This isn’t one of those, but I like it’s simplicity, and it’s solar powered, which is very calculator-retro and good for anywhere where the sun ever appears. It also gives me an opportunity to moan about something I heard on Radio 1 about the Sport Relief mile. The expert being interviewed suggested that everyone would need a heart-rate monitor for their training and for the event. For a mile-long jog? Really?

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