on your bike!
At the risk of stating the bleedin’ obvious, cycling makes you healthy. It’s exactly how healthy it makes you that is surprising. Just imagine the impact on their stock price if Glaxo Smith Kline developed a wonder drug that significantly slashed our chances of developing cancer and heart disease, of massively reducing our likelihood of dying early by over 40%, helped us stay slim and warded-off the probability of type two diabetes and the early onset of dementia. But before you hit ‘buy’ on GSK that miracle pill already exists and yep, it’s cycling.
Again, we’re all aware we live far too sedentary, office-bound lives and six million of us don’t even take ten-minutes of brisk exercise every month. This equates to 85,000 Britons dying early every year from a pandemic of largely preventable illnesses even though the same studies highlight that a modest regular exercise plan, encompassing cycling, can yield near-miraculous health dividends. The reason for these astounding claims is that cycling reaches parts of the body other sports don’t and it particularly pushes the cardiovascular system far harder, especially when racing others off the line, leaping away from the lights or grinding up a hill to the shops.
Notwithstanding, the fact that each and every cycling death is regimentally covered by the media, and Jeremy Vine is now more famous for the road-rage incident he endured than for his two-left footed Strictly performances, it’s never been easier to hop on a bike. Why, these days you don’t even have to own it. London’s 11,500 Bumble Boris bikes still lead the way but similar schemes now exist in most of our cities, though reclaiming one from the Manchester Ship Canal must surely put-off our northern neighbours! And when your cycling commuter colleague arrives you know they’ll either be smiling from the endorphin rush or shaking from another near miss…
With the increased number of weekend warriors and MAMILS on our roads you’d be forgiven for thinking we’ve already adopted Dutch levels of two-wheeled fandom, but you’d be wrong. For all the talk of a recent bike boom, commuter cycling rates are static at about 3% and less than 2% of all trips are undertaken on a bicycle. Probably the most shocking statistic is that, even though the rate of child-traffic deaths is falling, 94% of our kids are currently being escorted to school, the majority in a car. WTF! Yes, our roads are undeniably less safe than those in the Netherlands, Denmark & Germany but I do feel there’s more to it than that. In today’s ‘elf & safety riven culture I’ve read of one school in Portsmouth which attempted banning an eleven year old boy from riding one mile from his house, despite the route being almost entirely on cycle paths. Another threatened to report a family to social services for letting encouraging their kids to cycle unattended to classes.
Thankfully, not all are as bewilderingly belligerent as these and one secondary school in Suffolk has a cycling-in rate of over 60% (the other 40% rock-up in a horse & trap – ed.) and, purely coincidentally, I cycled past two separate groups of kids yesterday that were being put through their ‘Cycling Proficiency’ paces. With an aim to ease pressure on the NHS, potentially mitigate a predicted crisis in adult social care, and ensure our younger generations outlive us, it’s time we all did a bit more cycling, politically and personally. Push those pedals!
