Returning to cycling after years away?

Congrats on getting back on the bike! Isn’t it great to feel the freedom of cycling once again like the good old days?  As the saying goes, “once a cyclist, always a cyclist”, the passion never dies. But getting back on the bike and transitioning from a long layoff can take time to adjust.  The biggest mistake of all is to think you can simply jump on a bike and ride it ‘like the good old days’ only to be slapped by the hard realities that one is severely out of shape.  The key point here is listen to your body and take it one step at a time: let the fitness come to you and it will; chase your fitness too hard and it will hide from you!

Here’s a few tips on what to expect when ‘saddling up’ after a long layoff:

1. Aspects that most likely will have changed significantly:

Weight gain:

If you’ve been off for any length of time, then you’ll most likely know that the reason for your weight gain has been due to ‘inactivity’ and eating the same or more than you did in the good old days.  Sitting at a desk for lengthy periods of time simply piles on the weight if you don’t offset it with exercise like biking.  Your first few rides are going to rub this in.  Expect to feel ‘set back’ by your weight, but don’t give up your cycling because of it – this IS your wake up call to take action and do something about it, i.e: stick to cycling from now on, and cut portion sizes…

Lost fitness:

If you raced in the good old days, then looking back at ‘how fit you used to be’ can be a miserable ‘realisation’ of how much you’ve lost.  At least as a true beginner you’re in many ways finding out how fit you ‘could’ be, but as a come back cyclist, one tends to look back to how fit you ‘used to be’.

Looking back and ‘comparing’ is where it’s easy to get demoralised and lose faith in yourself.  You have to accept you’ve lost all fitness and are going to have to build it back up from scratch, just like a beginner – so adjust and come back slowly and progressively!

Perception of danger:

Skill levels will be back to almost zero when you return to cycling. For example, expect your descending skills which might have been fast before, are now back to near zero confidence levels. For this reason, you must descend slower to account for the loss of skill. Also, you’ll quickly find riding in traffic for the first few rides rather terrifying, when before you used to blast through it with full confidence like a skilled courier!

With time, these skills will come back – as I know from experience, the more you do of these things the better skilled you become again actually quite quickly. Give it time and keep practicing.

Do less training during the week:

Overall volume of training (how much cycling you do a week) will be significantly less than it used to be in the good old days.  Obviously lifestyle plays a big role here.  As we move through the different phases of our lives, so does the available time we have to commit to cycling.  It’s not ‘age’ or anything like that, it’s just life got busier and your responsibilities and priorities have changed.

With less training time you have to learn how to train smarter.  You can still be very fit on less training, but you’re going to have to be:

1. very consistent.

2. up your intensity

3. use the hills more often

4. get that long ride in each weekend.

If you’d like more information on how to train smarter on much less time, then check out my new ebook: The Time Starved Cyclist’s Training Formula: How to find TIME to train for 100 miles and NOT get divorced!

2. Things that will have most likely remained unchanged:

Bike position and style:

You may have found on your first few bike rides back how easy it was to get into your original bike position and style from where you left off!  Funnily enough, when we get back on the bike after a long layoff (especially the same bike) it feels like nothing has changed – but remember, as mentioned above, don’t let that lure you into thinking you are as fit as you used to be!

Competitiveness:

If you’ve always been competitive, competitiveness doesn’t go anywhere and it certainly doesn’t age – so take advantage of it!  Competitiveness is the fun part of riding our bikes: racing a friend up a hill is never going to change.. If competitiveness is in YOU, then it is linked to your passion and it will never die:-). Enjoy.

Training frequency and recovery:

You’ll find the first few rides wipe you out tremendously, but once through the first month back, you could find your training frequency and recovery from training returns to how it used to be. Speed of recovery varies from rider to rider, but having a year away doesn’t always mean your body has somehow slowed down your rate of recovery.  Most likely it is just you doing too much too soon…go easy, listen to the voice inside that is saying ‘rest’ and the fitness will come bouncing back sooner rather than later.

A training ‘blueprint’:

This is the body’s blueprint from all the years you put into cycling previously – no matter how long ago you rode a bike.  This means your body faintly ‘remembers’ your movements and adaptation to what you did previously. This blueprint never goes, it is like a ‘print’ of the old you.  This blueprint is difficult to explain, but all I can say from experience is it IS there and will accelerate your come-back to form.  This is in contrast to a complete beginner, who may need much more time to gain the same level of fitness.

Experience:

One of the big benefits to coming back to cycling when you’re ‘older’ or been away from it for years, especially if you were a racer previously, is that your experience has NOT degraded.  You simply start off as a born again cyclist with a wiser head than you were as a complete beginner.

When you do get your fitness back, you’ll find you can beat the youngsters quite easily. Why? Because if you were a racing cyclist previously, then your overall experience is what counts.

Realise that physical cycle training is only ONE PART of the equation to being a successful racer or rider at any age or time of life.  For this reason alone, you can use your full experience of skill, tactics and technique to beat the ageing curve by a long way and show up the younger fitter cyclists every time. Simply box clever and ENJOY!

Passion:

As I mentioned above, once you are a cyclist you’ll always be a cyclist in one form or another. As we get older, we have different viewpoints on that passion. I’m finding now that giving advice and helping you with cycling highly fulfilling and more satisfying than ‘cycle results’ could ever give me – but really, the joy of discovering new routes, getting the fresh air on your face and beating my husband up that next hill never quite leaves you.

Final words:

Coming back to cycling after years off can be a shock to the system. For this reason, adjust to your new limits and keep positive.  Enjoy starting over again physically and using all your experience to guide you forward. Train smarter than you did previously and look forward to surprising yourself with new personal bests this summer in your chosen charity rides and sportives.  Welcome back…

{ 1 comment }