Cycling to work – negatives?

3.5 miles to work for me. Never drive, refuse all lifts if offered. Ride in all weathers and love every minute of it. Although, riding home is better than riding to work even though it is uphill all the way home

At that distance I don’t think there are any negatives really.

You’ll enjoy it

TBH I think the main negative will be inflicting other road users eyes to the sight of your hiddeous bike!

I commuted by bike to my current workplace for about 6 months (April – September).

My commute is 17 miles each way & I managed to get a route sorted which was about 40% A road, the rest on country lanes.

I estimate I covered about 2500 miles in total.

Positives for me were: –

1. Fitness (definitely the fittest I have ever been)
2. The extra cash in my pocket
3. The countryside views

Negatives were

1. Riding into headwinds
2. Having things shouted at me by passing cars (only happened once or twice) – for no apparent reason
3. Being knocked off (just once – fairly minor luckily)
4. Tiredness – I found if I wanted to ride weekends I could only manage 3-4 days a week commuting
5. It meant I didn’t ride my MTB in the evening (which I would normally do in Summer)
6. The A roads – difficult to avoid & weren’t roads I would choose to ride on for leisure

I now lift share to get to work & ride MTB on summer evenings.

+1 for all the positives already said.Why wouldn’t you is the question?
Command the middle of your lane and don’t ride in against the kerb or you wil get cut up by drivers who can’t judge distance,time and space and then completely forget you are there.Commuting by bike should make you a better more considerate car driver too
Main negative for me is that I just want to carry on riding right past work most days!

Why buy a cycling clothes when you have a perfectly good green fleece and George trackie bottoms. Four miles would be a piece of piss for you , I used to cycle 7 miles to work a day when I stayed In North London and obviously back again. By the time you got to work you were totally refreshed and wide awake not to mention actually feeling good about yourself. The only downside was going for beers after work and thinking you were bulletproof flat out down Holloway Road.

try it. Stick it out for at least 4 weeks before reviewing….it will feel tiring initially so its easy to give it up after 1 week, but you get used to it very quickly and 4 miles each way is simple. If you get on okay it will soon start to make you feel fitter and you’ll start to save a few pounds.

This. It’s so easy to give up if you just do a few days here and there. For me this year it’s been all or nothing. Since getting back to fitness in August after injury, I haven’t missed a day. 14 miles, fairly flat round trip so not exactly a huge challenge. You will feel tired for the first week or so but the body does soon adapt.

you’ll think any other way of getting to work is massively contrived.

if you don’t race in you’ll be able to wear your work clothes for the ride in, you’ll need some bands / clips (or tuck your trousers into your socks) and waterproof trousers for the rainy days. Always pack a spare pair of socks or wear sealskinz over your work socks.

Leave a pair of shoes at work.

I also cycle commute and it’s 4 miles – I wear cycle specific clothing primarily because I have access to a locker and showers. you get into a routine and before you know it, it’s spring again and you’ve ridden through the winter

fresh clothes brought in Monday, swap towel on a Thursday, take clothes home for washing Friday.

shoes, belt, spare coat, shower gel, full change of clothes (in case you forget something) all live at work

ride positively in traffic, get a cheap bike and don’t try to upgrade it when major bits wear out, just replace because once you try to upgrade one bit you end up rebuilding the whole bike…

bikes are ace

13 miles each way for me most days 80% country roads
so less traffic more cow shit ,doing it since May
Positives -increased fitness arrive at work invigorated ,
fantastic scenery , extra cash, highlight of my day
which says more about my current job than the commute.
Negatives- weather can get you down sometimes,I live in
the west of Scotland so obviously I’m as hard as nails
but 70mph headwinds and sleet are enough to bring
a grown man to the brink of tears
bit knackered to start with but it gets better
give it a go

yoda,
I started cycling to work about 3 months ago. it’s 8.5 miles round trip.. I have a few hills both ways and do it on my hard tail. I even bought a road bike.. which was faster than driving into work.. until the weather turned foul, now I have slicks on the hardtail, takes an extra 4 minutes, but damn it feels good!

I also have the advantage of not wearing what I came in on to work. and have available showers in facility. If I didn’t have that option, i would think twice.

also.. if you use wet lube.. stop.

-ves
sometimes, when it’s late and you’ve done a long day, it’s 2 degrees outside and it’s raining and your clothes are wet from the ride in, and you get a puncture half way home and you don’t have a tube or a pump and the shops are closed, you might be tempted to cry and throw your bike under a bus and get a taxi home BUT that’s only happened to me once in 5 years of riding to work.

four miles, taken steadily in normal clothes. how relaxing. son2 rides three and he is 11. plus might be that you beat the traffic queue in town. negative might be that some tw*nt gets out of his car and lamps you. AJ52OBB, for example 😥

Don’t consider the car as an option. Make the bike the routine.

I’m also amazed actually how few days it rains.

Only a half a mile commute for me. Not great for the fitness levels but only takes me 5 mins and means I can come home for lunch 🙂

I’ve been riding 2.5 miles each way for years now. Just work clothes for me.

Even after a 14 hour day at work, the ride home’s ace.

Getting changed in and out of work cloths and the associated time. For a 4 mile commute I would just ride in work cloths, or maybe just swap tops and ride slowly, you will not be able to make up the time taken changing by cycling fast over such a short distance.

nope, no negatives. winter commuting is great.

I’ve been commuting for about 2 years now(probably about 3/4s of the time), even through the worst of last years winter. I absolutely hate it when i get the bus. Occasionally I’ll decide to leave the bike for what ever reason, I’ll always regret that about 2 minutes after sitting down on the bus. plus I need to get up earlier if i’m using public transport.

3.5 miles each way for me. I leave the house after half 8, and I’m generally back in before 20 past 5. What’s not to like. A gentle pootle into work wakes you up better too.

I just wear my normal clothes. and I’ve some decent waterproofs that keep me dry in the rain. Although, in the summer, I’ll wear shorts and tshirt and change in work, waterproofs aren’t great for summer rain. too warm.

way I look at it too, is that the £4 a day spend on an all day bus ticket, well I’m not spending that so it just bought my new bike for me. It would save me around £8-900 quid a year on bus fares if I did it ever day. Reality is probably around 5-600 quid, which is not to be sniffed at!

Similar experience to cycl1ngjb, albeit mine was 19 miles each way. In the end, I couldn’t hack 5 days a week and still want to ride at the weekend.

I ended up averaging 3 times a week. My problem was when riding the road bike I couldn’t seem to just cruise in and home, I always seemed to want to go flat out & it wrecked me.

I wanted to do it for fitness, rather than for the sake of it, so I think next year i’ll be a bit more structured & try to average 3 times a week once the clocks change.

4 miles though I would ride pretty much regardless. It’s nothing.

2-3 miles each way for me, but generally extend it to a 10 mile each way, as my thinking being, if I’m going to get hot and sweaty and needing a shower, I might as well make it worth it. In the spring I often extend that to a 20-30 mile in via local trails at Nant-yr-arian, but I do have the luxury of 50-60 hours flex time built up over the summer to take off riding, umm I mean use up 🙂

I cycle 7 miles each way and it really doesn’t take that much longer than driving to be honest.

The worst part is waking up early morning, around 5.30am and hearing the wind and rain bouncing off the bedroom window. Once you’ve been out for a couple of mins though and get warmed up; it’s fine.

I work shifts and the only downside for myself is cycling back at 2am after a late shift or at 8am after a 12 hour night; especially if work has been busy.

The other issue is that I can quite often be kept on at work and do a few hours extra, so a 2am finish can end up being a 5 or 6am finish; only to have to cycle back to work 7 hours later on a quick turn around.

If I was working a 9-5 day job, then I couldn’t think of any downsides really.

I do have a really nice cycle along a quiet coastal road, so get really lovely views. I usually see noe more than 5 or 6 cars over the 7 mile trip.I did however have a couple of incidents with cars nearly taking me out, but that was due to me being on the road at 3am and drivers not expecting to see a bike.

I’ve ended up using a single speed mtb for the last year and my maintenance costs have dropped to virtually nothing.

I carry a pair of trousers, shirt and underwear in a rucksack along with a couple of tubes, a few basic tools, a pump and a headtorch. Even though my shirt has been folded up in the bag, it still looks fine when I get to work.

I’d definately recommend doing it though, even cycling just 7 miles each way, I reckon it’s saved me around £20 a week.

i love commuting by bike. i do it in all conditions except one – ice.

my commute to work is through devon lanes that are great because they’re traffic free for 99% of my journey but if we have a winter like last year’s then i’m screwed because they don’t get treated to grit and they’re just a 6 -7 mile stretch of black ice. just impossible to ride on.

studded tyres – got me thru at two winters – available in road bike sizes as well from my LBS – the bikechain

sounds interesting. think i’d feel better putting them on a mtb than skinny road wheels mind.

goes off to google studded tyres.