You don’t have to see below. Since the 1st March 2016 I have been commuting 34 miles per day, on average 2 days per week, to one of my clients office’s in Central London.  Not very impressive compared with the hero’s on here, but all the same the numbers soon add up to an impressive total for a fat MAMIL like me (although I am a bit thinner now I still do not wear exposed lycra).
 
The Stats
 
3,151 total commuting miles ridden – actually more as I took the occasional long way home;
94 commutes or 188 rides;
Over 234 hours in the saddle or the equivalent of 27 working days of riding;
At an average speed of 13.5mph;
Fastest time: 1hr 9 mins;
Slowest time: 1hr 40 mins+ and the humility of being overtaken by a jogger;
Zero punctures;
Zero maintenance costs – however I have just replaced a sprocket and chain and I am treating the trusty Galaxy to a service, new cables and bar tape at the weekend;
Loss of 1.5 stone;
Received £1,575 in travelling disbursements.
 
 
In addition; I have gained a wider outlook on cycling life; acquired a new cycling wardrobe; there have been no deaths or injuries; only a couple of near misses and one of those was my fault and involved another cyclist – sorry again and only a couple of grumbles under my breath and the odd cross word at drivers;
 
And finally I was able to complete the BHF SDW in 14 hrs and raise money for a worthy charity – a feat that I would not have considered pre commuting as possible.
 
For those of you contemplating commuting by bike I would thoroughly recommend it, my only regret is not starting earlier and suffering the train and tube for so long.  Just imagine being awarded an extra 27 days of guilt free cycling every year – worth having cold toes in January for.

It’s great isn’t it. And you get home at night and work is a distant memory. Stress free living has it’s own benefits.

Well done! One or two days a week is better than none at all.

My commute is 21Km each way (13 miles if you wish), some weeks I’ll do five days, some none. Depends on weather and how I feel. The train is very convenient as a backup: my wife can drop me off on the way to her work and the other end is five mins walk from the office. £6.50 return If I average 3 days biking to work then that’s £19.50 per week saved or about £900 a year (taking into account holidays). Doesn’t take long to save up for new kit!

I love it. I dont ride into London however, I keep a ratbike at Paddington. Fortunately I come in on a mainline from the shires so my train journey is quite pleasant (2hrs e/w)

Im in London on average 3 times a month, and although Im based in Mayfair, I ride all over the city to client meetings and site visits on those days. I average about 20miles a day, gently pootling around in my work clothes. Yesterday, I rode from St James’ St to Clerkenwell, and beat my collegaue and the client who took a taxi by over ten minutes. It’s a no brainer

As for maintenance – this was the state of the whole circumference of my rear tyre the other day after probably 3,000+miles 😳

SO new tyre, and treated myself to some new mudguards as well. A princely £60 of costs in 5yrs. Not bad 🙂

cycled to work for 34 years.

once worked out that i could buy a 1k bike on new years day, ride it to work for a year, throw it away on new years eve, and i would still be 4k better off than if i drove to work.

cycle commuting is ace.

I do a part commute in the summer months. Full distance is 28 miles with 3000ft of climbing over the top of dartmoor. Takes ~2hrs each way which is too much to do regularly.

I drive the first 18 over the moors and ride the last mix of 10miles of singletrack, back lanes and cycles paths into Totnes.

Sometimes I’ll do the whole distance but generally as a drive in, ride home and ride back the next day.

Great thread, and so true! I commute 12 miles each way a couple of times a week, half of it on towpaths and cyclepaths. So much better than driving.

Nice summer days I come home the 19 mile long way. Towpath, river path and Sustrans path from the office to within half a mile of the village. With two pubs at halfway!

Absolutely agree – it’s great if you can.
In the past I commuted off-road across the south downs every day – saved us buyinh a second car plus I got fit enough to do the SDW in a day relatively easily.
Even the winter was OK – just dressed appropriately and had multiple sets of clothes.

I’m now trying to get back into that habit – a 9-10 mile road commute, this thread will hopefully help get back into it!

You forget to add in the extra food costs. I’m sure I eat more from the canteen than I would spend on petrol!

I miss it. Change of house, car & role means mostly driving the last couple of years, with only the occasional cycle commute. For the five years prior, I had logged £5K savings and a £4K spend.

cycled to work for 34 years.

Respect, ton!

Completely agree. When you add up the benefits it seems crazy that people commute any other way!

You forget to add in the extra food costs. I’m sure I eat more from the canteen than I would spend on petrol!

This was me!

But I called it ‘training fuel’ and wrote it off to a different (mythical) budget and all was right with the world again!

I now live at work; my commute is about 10 stairs from my kitchen. I am considering adding a ‘commute’ to the morning routine. The best bit will be I can choose the perfect length and won’t be restricted by the distance between the 2 doors and I don’t have to commute home in the evening. The worst bit will be I won’t be late if I get up late so the temptation will be to do just that. When doing a long bike commute with only one car in the house so there being no choice the getting up and on it was so much easier to achieve because it was not optional. And I always loved it once my hands had defrosted.

I’m a full time commuter, but I think in the last 16 months I’ve gained weight and spent a fortune on clothes and replacement parts and clothes.

Hoping it will level out soon, I’ve got everything I need now, but I do 200 miles a week just commuting and it starts chewing through parts fairly quickly.

OP, 34 miles a day is no small feat well done 🙂 and yes the price of commuting is super cheap especially if you use a bike you already have

As for the food, I’ve found that I eat like a normal person now rather than loading up, I just make sure I have some useful carbs straight after (banana is good) and then some nuts for protein and this sorts me out rather than just dirty troughing (but I do have a splurge on crap food sometimes too 🙂

Also the clothes don’t have to be expensive as they get destroyed by the crap from the roads and constant washing , buy out of season in the sales (IE noe is the time to get bibtights) and as long as you have decent shorts and shoes and gloves the rest is simple, just layer up

Hoping it will level out soon, I’ve got everything I need now, but I do 200 miles a week just commuting and it starts chewing through parts fairly quickly.

I’ve found this too, commuting is absolutely brutal on bike parts. I found that it does level out- although for me that involved not buying the same kind of stuff for my commuter as I would for my mountain or road bike- durability with a bit of a weight increase is def the way to go! So Alfine hub, square taper cranks, dynamo lights, steel frame etc etc 🙂

I did 100 miles a week from West to central London for about 10 years

Reckon it saved 2 grand a year, even taking into account buying and maintaining a bike (twice as I had one nicked) and commuting clothes.
Bikes were always s/h, commuting gear from aldi or stocked up on PSAs from here, deore drivetrain and marathon plus tyres, Army surplus goretex etc

Negatives-
Getting a bike nicked
I did break my ankle after a kid on a scooter took me out
For 6 months I was doing about 140 miles a week and I was struggling to ride at the weekends
Having to eat a huge bowl of porridge every morning !

Positives
20 grand saved?
Its a great way to see London
Quicker than public transport
Kept the weight off
Free training
Not affected by strikes or disruptions
Smug satisfaction of not feeling like a drone in a box or a can

I commuting know if know if via bike for the last 8 years, mostly in the my mountain bike and slicks fitted, but 2 years ago bought an an steel single speed for £150. It’s quickly become one one my favourite bikes ever.

Yes, it works so well for me too.
Have been commuting for a bit more than twenty years, now around 100 days a year on a choice of two main routes, 17 miles each way on road or slightly less if I go over the trails on the Sidlaw hills- but much more climbing.
Happily, I’ve an old and quite xc 26″ steel hardtail for the hill days and a rigid 29er for the road rooute- which still has some tracks in it.
Similar experiences to those above; greater food consumption, but run the bikes on a mix of Deore level and S/H kit, so not expensive. The current tyres on the 29er were £5.38 each in the CRC sale, that’s a typical purchase.
But best of all is the attitude thing; I can enjoy the trail route to work, even when it means I’m headed for work. Topping out on the Sidlaws after a hard climb means that the working day has been left a long way behind. Sometimes I’ll chuck in a one-way commute to a long distance meeting or visit, so maybe take the train from Dundee to Edinburgh or Glasgow, sometimes further, then afterwards ride home to Angus. Happy days. And sometimes, nights too… Deserted night roads can be fun.

Always the best days at work. Even in snow, I remember Mrs MR crying one sub-zero evening when I came through the door looking like a snowman from the front. Even my riding glasses had snow stuck to them and the front light had acquired a thick wind-packed-snow diffuser lens. Took me 5 mins to convince her I wasn’t suffering to save money, and was actually giggling with delight on the way home.

Just started in earnest, 10 miles each way, only managed twice last week but it was definitely quicker than any of the alternatives so that’s a plus! Have also been experimenting with not changing gear on the 29er MTB before taking the plunge and wheeling the bright pink Charge singlespeed out of the garage for its debut.

Only problem was on Day 1, barely ten minutes in and I witnessed a car skid and roll off the road on black ice. Thankfully driver unhurt but me and another passing motorist had to climb down the embankment and extricate her from her upside down car (with wheels still racing and smoke pouring out from the rear wheels 😯 ).

The subsequent commutes have been a bit boring after that. 🙁

when I lived about 2km from the office, my 24″ BMX was by far the best commuting vehicle I ever had.

and there was a BMX track on the way.

I commuting know if know if via bike for the last 8 years,

I’m dyslexic but this doesn’t makes sense, right?

How do people cope when the roads get icey? I literally can’t get my head round it! Do you put on really wide tyres? Or just slow right down?

gritters work through the night. roads a usually ok by the morning.

schwalbe puncture proof tyres and full mudguards are without a shadow of doubt, the best things a commuter should buy.

I used the “pub bike” with 26″ Marathon Winter studded tyres on sub-zero days. A lot more effort required, due to the extra weight, but worth it to stay upright on the ungritted back lanes.

shermer75 – Member
I commuting know if know if via bike for the last 8 years,
I’m dyslexic but this doesn’t makes sense, right?

Apologies, was posting off my mobile.

Meant to say ‘I have been commuting via bike for for the last 8 years’.

No worries!! 🙂

I can use the newly re-opened Bicester-Oxford train line for free. I do that once a set of shifts to re-stock my locker, and then pedal the commute (16 miles each way) the rest of the set (maybe have another train day when I do sets of 7). Non-cycling colleagues are now saving £100 a month (fuel plus parking) but that’s money I never spent anyway.

When it’s genuinely icy I don’t ride as much of my commute is on untreated roads, but those days are few and far between. When we had the proper cold spell in the winter (-7C) the roads were bone dry, it’s when it’s closer to freezing that it’s an issue.

And yes, consumables are lower spec on the commuter than on the nice bikes.

I’ve done around 20000km in the past 5 years and up to August last year, never had a problem, but have now had 3 fairly serious accidents in 5 months resulting in broken teeth, fractured ribs, broken figures, fractured pelvis, fractured femur and two hematoma…not to mention almost £400 worth of damage to bikes and kit and almost a month off the bike.

The first was my fault, but mostly just bad luck, the second, a pedestrian stepped out in front of me and I clipped him at 20mph. The last I came off hard on an icy morning.

Wondering if it’s worth it now…

If it’s icy I don’t commute, have had one hard fall on ice a couple of years back and that’s enough to put me right off, not worth a broken collar bone even if I do enjoy it a bit / save money.

This summer I’m going to try mixing the commute with dropping the little one off at nursery as well. Some big hills on route which I regularly hit 900watss up. the kiddy carry bike only has 9 gears, may have to get a very small front ring!

Had a fall on ice this week, probably only going at 3kmh and was about 5 metres from a cleared roads 🙄 The problem when you get older is that you don’t bounce as well as you did so you get whiplash strain in all sorts of places 🙁

The worst thing was that I fell on my replacement hip! Fortunately everything’s OK, first time I’ve fallen on it.

I used to cycle commute kingston to strand for 8 years. Yes it does save about 2k pa in todays money but i did spend loads more on food. I used to take a packed lunch in which was usually gone by 10.

Another +ve was i found our properties to buy, they were all on the commute. I also used to beak up the journey by visiting friends, viewing auctions and extending the route via parks, towpaths etc.

Richmond park at dusk is stunning, up by the ballet school.

Velonelle

Cycling to work is like riding a bike
Fall off a few times but you soon get the knack
Once up to speed go as fast as you like

Unsure of your balance? Why not try a trike?
Tyres pumped up and a spare in your pack
Cycling to work feels like riding a bike

Taxis and texters are a menace alike
Getting it wrong means a monstrous stack
Away from the kerb and as fast as you like

Carving through cones like a snaggle-toothed pike
Cycle Scheme beauty or singlespeed hack
Cycling to work counts as riding your bike

Drivers are mostly quite reasonable… Psych!
Getting too close? Give their mirror a whack
Then nip away quick, just as fast as you like

Go gently and remember what happened to Mike
Get into the habit and never look back
Cycling to work is like riding a bike
Once up to speed go as fast as you like