Cycle 1: The Fear

If I could sum up my early cycling-to-work experiences, it would be in the above. This has become my mantra and it honestly helps LOADS.

I realise that I went all shy and quiet just as the biking was getting interesting. (Well actually, choosing my bike and what happened next was a whole lot of waffling and pretty damn boring.) In another post I'll introduce you to my bike (not quite named as she's yet to settle down and sort herself out).

(A side note about fear: I would have ridden in to work either yesterday or today for the third time in 2012 except that on Saturday it snowed and oddly for England, it hasn't all melted yet. My post is about overcoming the fear, but I'm not a frickin numbskull and until England has sorted out some snowplows and cleared the roads, me and Ethel (one name for the bike bandied about) are playing it safe and I'm taking the bus.)

So: the fear. The first fear I overcame was that I quite simply wasn't going to make it. Twice in my first ride back in November I very nearly turned back and went home and it was only knowing that I would be ridiculously late for work that kept me going. This kind of makes me laugh - now - but there's something very strange about knowing that it is your own body that is going to get you the 6 miles to work. It's kind of a lot of pressure. The second fear is of the traffic.

There are two routes I can take to work - one picturesque, over hills and along canal tow paths (which I'll take in the summer when it's light out and I'm more confident) and the other: on the road, in the road, of the road. Cars generally give me a pretty wide berth (you'll understand when you see a photo of me on my bike) but I still have to bike alongside them and get in front of them and slow them down. (I hate slowing them down - how embarrassing!) That first ride when I nearly turned around and went home, I was in the way of a car as I tried to muster up the courage to bike on the road where the cars giving me wide berth would be risking it by crossing into the oncoming traffic around a blind corner. There is no fear here though if you... *drum roll please* keep calm and carry on. Just keep biking! Don't stop and it's all good. Particularly when biking between lanes of traffic on a roundabout. I won't explain the ins and outs of this except to say, it must be done, I have to cross lanes of traffic while going around the roundabout and having done it once, it's actually quite exhilarating (I'm always thinking 'I'm like a car! I'm like a car!') and I'm happy to do it again and again.

Those of you reading from Canada will be familiar with lululemon and their manifesto. I think it's a good mirror for the jpg I started this post with. One of the things from the manifesto also runs (cycles?) around my head as I cycle - do one thing a day that scares you (that and floss every day). On days when I ride to work, I definitely tick that one off the to do list.