The more I ride, and considering I ride with cars on the road 100% of my commute, the more I hate cars. It's a poor style of thinking at times, but I really can't stand the idea of getting around in a car anymore. They smell, they hurt my back, and they don't encourage thinking. When I ride the bus or in a car, I don't really think as much about the world, but when I ride a bike, I either can tune out to the scenery or the road, or have some quiet time to myself. Or, if I'm in a mood, I may yell at some cars. Not a great habit, but they're going fast enough that they really don't even notice. Sometimes I'm more motivated to not ride in a car then I am to ride a bike, although other than the school bus there is no public transportation where I live to get to school or work.

It has to become something you do routinely without having to make choice. The more decisions you need to make, even about trivial things, the more opportunity you have to find a reason to not ride. I've also found it helpful to take motivation out of the equation, because waiting to want to do something often means it won't get done. If you don't frame it as a choice then it's easier to push through reluctance and just do it.

I found that preparing everything I needed the night before work helped a lot. Everything I was taking to work was on the bike and whatever I was going to wear was already laid out when I got up in the morning. Since everything was ready I didn't have to stop to decide about what to wear, gather up everything I need to take to work, find my keys, etc. I also kept a spare change of clothes at work.

Plus, traffic is really aggravating where I live. My bike commute took me 20-25 minutes. Driving could take anywhere from 10-60 minutes, not including trying to find a parking space. The bus was about 30-45 minutes. On many a morning when I really didn't want to ride my bike I reminded myself of the numbers. If it was raining, I reminded myself that I would be spending about as much time walking in the rain and waiting for the bus as I would riding my bike home.

If you don't ride every day, it might be helpful to plan out which days you'll be riding in advance. That way, you don't have to decide if you want to ride in the morning. If it's Tuesday, it's bike day.

The key is to set yourself up on a predetermined path that you can run on autopilot.

Hey, I just like biking and the exercise and it is like some of the commute is exercise time for free. Endorphins help a lot

But if you want to loose weight, just biking won't do it. You have to eat healthier too. If you do you will loose lbs much faster, and this is a good motivation. I find If I cycle I want to eat less and better. It isn't just that I don't want to eat back the calories I burned cycling, but I just physically am not as hungry.

Good luck and keep plugging at it.

I'd rather be on Team Jelly Belly



than on Team Slim Jim.



Just sayin'. Those meat sticks are disgusting.

I do it because I like biking and it is healthy and keeps me fit and the weight down.

I too, live in Silicon Valley. I could bike 16 to work faster than driving to shuttle stop and taking the shuttle down crappy El Camino Real to work. Same for ride home if I rode during commute hours, but I generally rode home later.

I also started eating healthier. Cut out desserts and snacks. Smaller serving at lunch. Dinner is a sizeable salad and a side order of protein. NO FOOD AFTER DINNER! Cut out bread and pasta. Combine with exercise and weight loss will follow. You really have to remember that you aren't hungry. There's a difference between "I'm not full" and "I need to eat something".

It takes a while to build up to long rides every day. My commute is 22 miles each way, and I bike to work in the morning and take the train most of the way home and bike 5 miles from the train. I am doing it four times a week now; Wednesday is my non-ride day. Commuting by bike means I commute for 2.5 hours. Non-biking is 2 hours, with 2 miles of walking. So commuting by bike really makes effective use of my time if I need 9-10 hours of exercise per weeks.

Keep riding; I think you'll eventually get to the point where you don't find that you need motivation. Unless the weather sucks :-)

A lot of my skips are due to juggling kids. Taking kiddo to daycare, rescuing the nanny from the babies

But if you could ride a bike while juggling kids...well, I think people might pay to see that.

+1

simple and succinct.



however, i'm not a hardliner about these matters. if there's a compelling reason for me not to bike commute on a given day, i will drive our car (or wait for the bus if my wife needs the car), but i'd always rather be on the bike; it's my default option because it's far and away the most fun option.

Hey Andy, nice to 'meet' ('meat'?) you! I've seen your words around the forums a lot over the years of course, but it's nice to put a face to the name for those that don't use a pic for their thumbnail.

My secret to force myself to ride instead of drive, is to store my car at work. My work has our own free parking deck inside a gated compound with 24/7 security, so I can park it way up on the 4th floor out of everybody's way.

That way, when it's morning, my car's not even at home and I have no choice but to ride. If the weather is really surprisingly horrendous, then I can wait and beg a ride from my wife when she takes the kids to school, but then I get to work like 2hr later.

Bonus: if something comes up in the middle of the day and my wife can't pick up kid(s) from school, I've got the car and can swing by and grab them. I keep my saris bones rack in the trunk so I can also always toss on my bike, or more likely drive home, drive back in the morning and ride home the next day. (I also trust the parking deck's bike parking area)

Here's an idea that might be similar: assuming you're married, and assuming you get up and leave before your wife gets up; have your wife hide your car keys, so if you want to ride, you have to wake her up. If your wife is like mine, waking her up early is not something you'd risk lightly!

Last Friday the 5th we had a function at work that most people didn't return to the office from. Ordinarily I would have biked to the office and cadged a ride to the thing and found someone anyone who would take me back to the office. This time I didn't, I just drove straight there by myself and then drove home. It's a lot easier to do that these last 4 yrs since we bought a 2nd car after I got hit by a car and couldn't ride for a while.

I really need to get rid of that 2nd car to improve my motivation.

This past Friday I was sick, rode in sick, and just got sicker, so I got a ride home from my wife, left the bike in the office, came back for it this weekend. So, really, no reason not to ride (except I probably shouldn't have come to work at all on Friday).

I was dead tired last night. Wasn't sure if I was going to ride today. Woke up still tired. Sore legs, but rode anyway. Everything was already prepped for riding. Five minutes into the ride I felt fine and was glad I did ride.

Now that would be effective, but it's hard to drive with serious injuries so maybe too effective.

Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to respond. This has been both interesting and helpful. While pondering your input I've considered my own mental mechanisms and thought about why just loving to ride hasn't been enough for me, and I've come to some realizations that weren't clear to me.


1. Driving -- This is the one where I was most surprised to realize what's going on a lot of the time. I really do enjoy biking to work, and depending on traffic my attitude toward driving ranges from dislike to detest. So why would I ever choose to drive when I don't have to? It's easier. Not more fun. Certainly not less stressful. Just easier. Despite my involvement in cycling, I am a profoundly lazy man -- quite possibly the laziest in Washington County. As many of you have said, I never regret biking to work once I've done it, but there is that time before I've decided to do it when some days I just don't feel like doing anything -- and let's face it sitting in a car driving is pretty darn close to doing nothing. I think here the advice from those who said not to think of it as a choice is the answer. If I don't ask myself whether or not I feel like riding to work the answer won't be 'no.' What's more, I know from experience that the more often I ride the more energy I have so this one should diminish with time if I can get myself re-established.

2. Sleep -- I really enjoy sleeping, or perhaps I should say I enjoy rolling over and going back to sleep after I wake up. This has always been an issue for me. My senior year in high school I got an automatic 'F' one grading period in a class that I was crushing academically because it was the first class of the day and I missed it more than the allowed number of times. When my daughters were in school I had something external to regulate my schedule. Right now I'm on my own and not adjusting well. Luckily my job allows me to be a slacker in this way. Today I just decided to bike in even though I felt like I was "late" and nobody said anything. That doesn't feel like a good solution. Just "deciding" to get up early and get moving doesn't seem likely either.

3. Schedule conflicts -- Thanks to Darth Lefty for mentioning juggling kids. A lot of my "skips" over the past few years have been because of family issues. Sometimes it has been having to take my daughter to a late morning doctor's appointment. Sometimes it's a family event going on early in the evening so I want to get home as early as possible and not be all sweaty when I get there. I'm not sure what I can do about this, but it wasn't an issue in 2009. Maybe getting to work earlier would fix it.

4. Weather -- This hasn't really been brought up much, but it's been a factor for me in the last six months. I always used to think of myself as a rain or shine commuter, but the weather really wore me down this winter. I've lived in the PNW for 22 years, so I know how to accept a lot of rainfall, but this year has been something more than that. It's probably more or less back to normal now, but I'm so shell-shocked that I find myself looking at the weather forecast and thinking "no more." I did mention maybe not riding home last Friday because of such a glance at the forecast. It ended up not raining at all during my ride. Last Thursday it rained for my entire ride in to work and the beginning of the ride home. I can get over this. I just need a bit of summer.

5. Fitness -- I know I initially related this to the size of my gut, but I really do see fitness and weight as two separate things. The main thing I hope to get out of riding more is a better physiological relationship with the bike. I want to restore my base fitness, regain the endurance I used to have (riding all five days last week wore me out!) and maybe pick up a little bit of speed. Weight loss is something else. I do find that when I'm riding regularly that makes losing weight extremely easy, which is nice, but it does still require some adjustment to my diet. I'm doing that right now, but losing weight really isn't my primary goal. My fitness dropped off so much in the last two years and I was having such trouble getting it back that I went in to talk to my doctor about it, thinking there may have been a heart issue behind my seeming inability to regain the form I once had. He told me that at 47 I couldn't expect to do the kinds of things I could do when I was 25. I told him I just want to be able to do the kinds of things I could do when I was 45. A few tests confirmed that I'm just out of shape. I can fix that.

Andy, I fully anticipate dealing with the kids. I've got a good kid seat thing going with the Blackburn copilots, which pop off easily and move between bikes with the same rack. I've taken kiddo to daycare a few times and will continue. The babies are still too small for trailering, though. If a ride gets scrubbed I try to replace it with something else if I can. I've pretty often lately been putting the babies in the jogger and kiddo on his Strider and going to get a donut. That gives Mom a 1+ hour break and is plenty of workout. As they grow, I'm going to try to keep my kids up to date with bikes that fit their needs and ride with them as much as my bum ticker will let me.

Newton's Second Law, Andy. You just have to get up and go. Somehow learn to embrace the temporary inconvenience/discomfort of having to ride the bike, because it will make other challenges in your life a bit easier. No more excuses.

Brilliantly put. So true.

That's a tough one. The unlikeliness of 'Just "deciding"' is huge (I felt the same way in this thread where most people suggestion was 'just check the weather all the time')

You could consider moving your alarm clock across the room, so you have to get out of bed to snooze, at which point maybe you'll be more likely to get moving? (Might not be acceptable for the wife though)


I agree!

Personally my motivation problem is not about whether to ride or not, but whether to ride hard or not. I am also lazy, and my commutes always involve about the same effort as going for a walk. I can't force myself to keep pedaling, get the heart rate up. So neither my weight nor fitness ever change!

Yeah, I know that one all too well. In the winter I take the approach that riding in the rain (seriously, it rains all winter) is challenging enough that I'll give myself a pass on riding hard. Too often summer is almost over before I realize that I never stopped thinking that way.

I think if I got a heart rate monitor, that might help.

(For a week before I get bored and ignore it)

For fast riding it's useful to have an easy gauge of how you're doing. Overall time is a good one, so is average speed which is sort of the same thing but you can watch it during the ride.

This winter has been total crap, and in Seattle we broke the 122-year record for rainfall since October 1.
Seattle just broke a 122-year-old record for rain ? because of course it did | The Seattle Times

It would be awesome if summer arrived before July this year.

Sounds to me like you are suffering from BCB (bike commuter burnout.) Try some other things. Bring your bike to work and ride for an hour after work. Do some shorter or longer bike tours. Get a mountain bike and ride in the woods on weekends. Go on group rides. Join a gym and do spin classes and other workouts. I'm sure you could come up with a dozen more ideas.

For me it's all habit. It's hard to imagine commuting with anything but a bike.

I really don't think this is the case. I gave myself permission years ago to skip a commute just because I didn't feel like riding. What's going on now is that I actually do want to ride more than I am and I'm just trying to overcome the little mental barriers that have crept into my mental processes.

As for mountain biking, that's actually a part of how my fitness slipped to where it did. I generally go through cycles of getting fat in the winter and then slightly less out of shape in the summer, but last April I was out mountain biking and broke a rib, which basically torpedoed my riding for about two months. I've decided to sell the mountain bike for my own safety. My current combination of skills (almost none) and healing ability (almost none) just don't make it a good discipline for me.

I hear you on the lack of MTBing skills. I purchased a used fat bike last fall and have been having a blast on it. No snow this winter, but plenty of warm weather all winter to get in plenty of rides. I don't find it relaxing at all, having to focus on the ground and trees constantly, but is sure is a change of pace. So far no serious injuries, and I plan to keep it that way. The fat tires and front suspension make for a pretty nice and relatively safe ride for someone with almost no skills. I am actually improving and feeling more comfortable in that environment.

I rode in constant rain last Thursday, and on the way home my front brake decided to start dragging (sticky piston). Add that to a tasty headwind and underinflated tires and I felt like I was towing a side of beef. That totally sucked. With just light sprinkles last Friday and yesterday I switched to the Sequoia. It has excellent fender coverage but I don't want to subject it to full-on muck.

Today's forecast was showing 100% chance of rain in the morning, so I took some advice from this thread and prepared last night by fixing the brake problem on my primary rain bike. This morning, sure enough, the rain was dumping when I left the house, but I had the bike ready so I put on my raincoat and shoe covers are took it in stride. Two miles in the rain stopped and though there was a slight headwind the ride was quite enjoyable.

That's the thing I always forget about spring weather. When the winter forecast says 80% chance of rain, it tends to mean there's an 80% chance that it'll be raining the entire day. When the spring forecast says 80% chance of rain, it tends to mean there will be rain some time in the forecast window but probably mostly just overcast.

So now I'm at seven consecutive days and 9 of the past 10 commuting.