Work and sport can be mutually reinforcing — here’s 10 ways your job can benefit your riding
t’s a beautiful crisp, clear autumn morning. The call of the road is strong. Your bike stares at you temptingly. Your legs twitch. A couple of hours out, playing on the pedals would be perfect right now. But it is Monday. And that means work: that pesky necessity that gets in the way of cycling but which must be obeyed because it pays for the bikes, gadgets and kit, as well as the home to store them in, and the food that fuels your pedalling.
We all know being a cyclist can help us do our day jobs better. Commuting by bike has been shown by research to help us feel more energised and alert while at work. The ride home provides a chance to decompress and process everything that has happened during the day, allowing some headspace before walking in your front door.
Those working within sport can use their riding to inform their job and engage better with their clients. For everyone, there are many life skills that cycling teaches us and which help make us more successful in the workplace: tackling challenges, learning new skills, sustaining discipline, setting goals, communicating with co-workers, and having the certain conviction that hard work breeds success.
Nonetheless, many of us end up resenting the fact we’re shackled to employment obligations for eight to 10 hours a day — with a serious impact on available riding time. One way to alleviate the negatives is to consider how your job could actually complement your cycling and make you better on your bike. We’ve spoken to 12 people who believe that key elements of their job make them a better cyclist.
1. Get organised
One of the most important assets that can be taken from work and applied to cycling is good organisation. If cyclo-cross rider Davie Graham doesn’t make sure the ferry he skippers leaves on time, with the right crew, safety equipment and passengers, there are serious consequences. These are skills he has transferred to his racing, he says. Living on the tiny island of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland, every race requires Graham to spend at least one night away from home:
“I have to be organised and have a checklist for everything I need, all the equipment and paperwork, for both me and my dog.”
2. Develop resilience
However well organised you are or how thoroughly you have planned, things can still go wrong — at work and on the bike. One of the best ways to protect ourselves from the hurt or frustration associated with such mishaps is to build up resilience and learn how to bounce back from failure. Lucy Gossage is a doctor specialising in cancer treatment, as well as being a four-time winner of Ironman UK:
“From working as an oncologist, I’ve learnt that it’s OK to fail — it’s not always possible to succeed against cancer. It’s only really failure if you haven’t done your best or don’t try again. And that the greatest sense of satisfaction comes from achieving something you initially think impossible. I think many of the skills I acquired during my research PHD, such as the ability to learn from mistakes, have definitely made me a better athlete.”
3. Chunk it up
A great technique to help develop resilience is to ‘chunk up’ time to help get through tough spells. Club cyclist Howard Compton teaches outdoor pursuits to students with emotional and behavioural disorders. Working with students, many of whom have short attention spans, Compton breaks every task into bite-sized pieces — something he now does with difficult rides too:
“I undertook an Ironman a couple of years ago and so I split the 112 miles into sections. I knew the route was 2.5 laps, so I split each lap into 30-minute chunks and mentally ticked off each chunk.”
“There are many life skills that cycling teaches us and which make us more successful in the workplace”
4. Stretch your comfort zone
While at work, we often have to do things that push us outside of our comfort zone — giving a presentation, say, or dealing with a disgruntled customer. This teaches us that our comfort zone extends further than we thought. Realising the same thing about your cycling can pay huge dividends and prevent fear from limiting your success. It works the other way round, too: the braver you get in your cycling, the bigger the boost you can transfer to your work. Discovery TV channel buyer Kerrie Mcevoy agrees:
“In the early part of my career, I struggled with completion of tasks and having the confidence to speak up and make my voice heard. If a project got tough, I’d give up and seek help. As I progressed with cycling, I learned that I was capable of so much more. As my legs grew stronger, so did my resolve not to give up, and this new confidence translated to the boardroom. I’m not afraid to back myself anymore. Cycling has made me braver and bolder at work.”
5. Sharpen your focus
At work we are set objectives and know we’ll be judged on our success or failure in hitting them. Being focused on a definite outcome can help on the bike, too. Yanto Barker, the former elite road racer who now runs cycle kit company Le Col, says:
“In work or cycling, the biggest thing is discipline and understanding that the world is a competitive place. If you don’t work hard, someone else will, and they will reap the rewards instead of you.” PR director Kate Allan, the current national 50-mile TT champion, is mother to a one-year-old child, so has limited time to fit in training around work and childcare:
“I have to make every session count. This has given me far greater grit and determination, which manifests itself naturally in my working day.”
6. Cope with adversity
Most of us have difficult days at work, when whatever we do seems to get us nowhere; no one listens to us, and every action seems to backfire. Likewise, we’ve all had days like that on the bike, when nothing goes to plan. Learning how to transfer the coping mechanisms you have developed for work onto the bike can give you a short cut to success. Executive director of the King’s
Head Theatre in London, Fiona English has transferred this skill to great effect:
“If things are difficult at work, I take myself mentally out of the situation, deep-breathe and gently remind myself I can accomplish anything. This exact tactic has proved incredibly useful on the bike, as I have pushed the boundaries of what I am able to do. Choosing to believe I could accomplish these goals and transferring skills learnt in the office has helped me tackle 130km-plus days.” Transferred coping mechanisms can also help to deal with pre-race nerves. Helen Croydon, an author and freelance journalist, often appears on TV — work she used to find nerve-wracking:
“I had to learn to ignore the butterflies, take a few deep breaths and get on with it. Now, I adopt the same techniques if I catch myself suffering from pre-race nerves.”
7. Set specific, deadline-driven goals
Each new race season requires the setting of goals: our main target events. We do this every day in work too, and because most of us are effectively a cog in a bigger business mechanism, each goal involves other workers, comes with a deadline, and is part of a larger, ongoing objective. From working as a TV executive while also pursuing cycling goals, Kerrie Mcevoy has learnt:
“Preparing a good training plan to take on a challenging race and preparing a good project plan for work are similar in many respects. You start out with a big goal or outcome that you wish to achieve, and you work back, breaking it down, putting in place the milestones that you have to reach in order to achieve your ultimate goals, whether those are fitness or work-related.”
8. Meet deadlines
Deadlines at work can be incredibly annoying — but they do mean we get stuff done. without a boss checking on our cycling progress, we are liable to procrastinate. tv journalist Helen croydon says one of the best things she has learnt from her job is a ‘just do it’ attitude:
“As a journalist, if I have a deadline, I have to meet it. I have to get a report on air whether I have the perfect pictures I wanted to use or not.”
9. Do the basics brilliantly
at work, unless you keep focused on doing the basic, staple parts of your job brilliantly, you won’t be employed for long. it is exactly the same in cycling. no point having the £5k bike, aero helmet, disc wheel and fancy overshoes if you haven’t done the training or shed that two stones of excess weight. Pro rider turned kit maker yanto Barker is
clear that, in both work and riding, success begins by mastering the basics and never taking them for granted:
“The numbers are the reality. All the beautiful kit we make is worth nothing if it’s not generating sales. My strategy is to always keep an eye on the numbers, which is exactly what I did as an athlete. They indicate what the future will hold.”
10. Maintain a sense of perspective
few of us confront genuine life-ordeath situations in our work, but it can sometimes feel like it, when we’re up against pressures and deadlines, negotiating to save our reputation among colleagues. these pressures in work can help us keep at the forefront of our minds that we ride our bikes for the love of it. cycling is not a necessity, and we should treasure it, rather than worry about it. oncologist lucy gossage, who does indeed encounter
life-and-death circumstances every day in her job, is constantly reminded:
“Whenever I resent an early alarm call for a training session, I just have to think of some of the patients I’ve seen the day before — I remember how lucky I am to have my health and to be able to train. Equally, when I’m suffering, I remind myself that I’m choosing to suffer. Cancer patients don’t get that choice. Remembering that I’m choosing to make myself hurt is immensely helpful.”
Many of these skills can be found across the work spectrum, whatever you do for a living; others are unique to particular jobs. Think carefully about your job and how it might be a resource that could enable you to gain advantages on your bike. Perceiving the complementarity between your vocation and your riding might even help you gain more satisfaction from your work. There is no need to assume that the hours at work represent ‘wasted’ time keeping you apart from your bike — there are many ways to make it count.
“I remind myself I’m choosing to suffer. Cancer patients don’t get that choice”