I had contacts for years before getting PRK (like LASIK, but a little different) two years ago. I went through a time in college when my contacts were so uncomfortable I would only use them for cycling. Frankly, my experience with cycling and contacts is a little of a mixed bag. The contacts would dry out for the first couple minutes at the start of the bike ride (until my body sent extra tear action to compensate), and because I had toric lenses (for astigmatism), I would have trouble seeing for those couple minutes. Not really a huge problem until I started racing track, and especially match sprints; I would be essentially blind for the first couple laps.

All that said, contacts are the best thing next to surgery for sport activities. There are minor problems, most of them related to comfort, but the thought of using my heavy glasses on a bike was almost unthinkable. What with the sweat and the vibration and the lack of clear peripheral vision.... And you'll get over the whole "can't stick your finger in your eye" thing pretty quickly. As someone said before, all you feel is a little pressure because you have the contact lens between your finger and your eye. You don't feel pain at all. Not if you are doing it right (though there were days every once in a while when the contacts just didn't want to go in for whatever reason).

Anyway, for me, after almost 20 years in contacts, my contacts started getting to be a big burden. I couldn't stay out late without getting really irritable because of eye discomfort towards the end of the day. Looking at a computer screen all day drove my eyes nuts. I got to the point where I would either have to go through the rigamarole of finding a new contact lens that would be more comfortable (especially onerous with toric lenses), go back to glasses and ditch the contacts, or get surgery. I opted for surgery. The PRK procedure takes a longer time to recover from than LASIK, but I don't have to worry about a flap on my cornea and my night vision is better because the treated region is bigger (PRK cuts through less thickness of the cornea than LASIK). Best decision I've ever made. Now I have near normal vision without having to mess with contacts or glasses.