How to boost your road cycling motivation

What if you’re having one of those days when, no matter what you tell yourself, you can’t bring yourself to ride?

Here’s how to get moving

You can boost motivation by slowing down. Don’t think of all the things you have to do to get ready to ride.

Instead, do one small, easy task.

Maybe it’s filling your tires. Or oiling the chain.

Can’t do it? Then make the task even smaller.

Place the bike pump next to your tires. Or set the bottle of oil next to the bike.

Then, do another small, easy task.

Inch your way forward. No step is too small.

Each small step builds momentum.

It’s exactly like riding a bike.

It’s much harder to pick up speed from a full stop. But once you’ve started and have traction, it’s easy to keep going.

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You don’t have to use a massive amount of mental energy every time you’re not motivated to ride.

Instead, you can plan a response for your unmotivated moments with one strategy—the implementation intention.

That means creating a plan for how you’ll respond when you’re not motivated. (You can also use this strategy on a tough ride.)

Think of this strategy as an automatic response when there’s a lack of motivation.

Implementation intentions begin with an ‘if’ statement, such as, ‘if don’t have the energy for a hard bike ride’.

Followed by a ‘then’ statement, such as, ‘then I’ll do an easy ride’.

Other implementation implementations might look like this:

If I don’t want to cycle alone, then I’ll do a group ride.

If I don’t want to do an hour-long trainer session, then I’ll do 20-minutes.

Motivation ebbs and flows, but you can plan for it.

If you miss a day (or many), that’s okay. You can take a break before returning to cycling.

It’s about consistent effort over time.