# How I made cycling fun again Source: https://proofinprogress.com/posts/2025-09-14/how-i-made-cycling-fun-again.html ## Summary The author describes giving up on using bikes for city transportation and reframing cycling as a sport, after years of frustration over traffic safety in Berlin. They say they once believed bikes could make inner cities less polluted, quicker and safer, but close calls with motorists left them exhausted and stressed. Their new rules are to ride only for sport, keep workouts under an hour (for example, 15 minutes out and back), and minimize time sharing roads with motorists. They report that this has made cycling enjoyable again, and they bought a Canyon Griyl AL 7 gravel bike to do so. ## Article proofinprogress.com With this post, I want to document how I made cycling fun for myself again. The context is that, maybe sometime in 2018-2019, I (falsely) started to believe that cycling would be a great option for transportation in the inner city. I started to become an urban mobility enthusiast. I believed that we could remodel cities in ways where transportation could become less pollutive, quicker and safer. I'd think that bikes were one of the core ways to achieve this in my home Berlin Germany. I'd get on my bike with a great sense of entitlement for wanting to feel comfortable, safe and respected by all the other traffic participants. I'd watch the videos from famous urban mobility influencers like not-just-bikes or Adam Something. When motorists would cut me off in traffic, my idealism and anger would kick in for how selfish they are. I'd often get off my bike feeling exhausted, stressed and actually sick to my stomach. Not even necessarily for my own failure to regulate my emotions, but also because there'd be genuinely so many close calls during my rides that my sense of safety would feel betrayed. But after many years of trying to invoke the change I wanted to see, I must now admit that these ideas and this anger were probably largely pointless. Instead, I now wish I would have given up on my lofty expectations to change society to the better sooner. And I wish I would have designed cycling as primarily a sport for me ealier. I now realize that all I really wanted out of cycling is a good and relaxing cardio workout in nature. To my shock, I recently found out that I have all the required components for this right in front of my door step. After having given up on cycling for maybe two years entirely, through watching racing bike cycling videos on social media, this somehow reignited my love for riding again and so more or less spontaneously, and as a means to broaden my cardio vascular activities, I just decided to buy a Canyon Griyl AL 7 gravel bike with the following specific intentions: 1. Use the bike exclusively for sport, not for transportation. I now believe that using bikes for transportations is a fool's errand. In Germany, sharing the road with cars is like playing Russian Roulette. There are so many idiots driving around, quite a few suffering delusions and intrusive roadrage. I have found that it is neither worth the upside of riding, nor the anger to even try to use a bike to get around. I think it is unnecessarily dangerous, stressful, unhealthy and pointless. Much better and decently cheap alternatives like shared cars or public transport exist. However, using a bike during workouts for sport feels great. I get to use a muscle group that isn't necessarily hit by my other activities and riding is just so much fun! 2. Do only short and under an hour workouts. I'm not sure why but I was, for many years, under the impression that bike tours up to 3 or 5 hours would be a fine work out routine. However, considering my other workouts, in retrospect, doing 3-5 hour workouts are huge outliers in terms of duration. I'd always come back entirely drained, exhausted and frustrated. Starting to treat bikes rides with the same duration-discipline I have with swimming resistance training and running, I have noticed how much more enjoyable the activity becomes. I now just ride 15 minutes in one direction and then turn around. 3. Avoid, at all costs, sharing cycling routes with motorists. Motorists are a huge risk factor when wanting to ride bikes. Riding bikes has become a politicized issue among some motorists which feel marginalized by pro-bike politics. Having experienced many close calls where motorists also intentionally tried to put me into dangerous situations, I have now made it a non-negotiable principle to strictly minimize the time I spend sharing my route with motorists. Interesting, I have manages to cut my road.sharing down to maybe 30 seconds, for which I feel privilged. 4. Buy good equipment that aid the comfort of the ride. I don't know why but for too long I didn't own special cycling pants. Recently, I have bough a cheap pair from Decathlon and they have changed my life. Why write this? I wanted to write this down because I feel like it is a major psychological advancement/adaption I went through over, funnily, a decade. I want to document this because I feel like I have managed to erradicate and turn-positive a source of stress and frustration I felt was a political issue priorly. While maybe small and not broadly applicable, I hope that readers of this blog may find this either applicable in other aspects of their life, or also for cycling. Maybe one day truely safe Amsterdam-style cycling in the city will be possible. I'd love if it would be. But I'm also just really happy to not having to be a part of the annoying and exhausting politics to get there. I love cycling, being in nature, enjoying the feeling of a workout. The sun on my body, the excitement of making a turn or overtaking someone. Thinking about politics just makes me feel awful. Do more of what you love. published 2025-09-14 by timdaub ## Comments **mishaderidder.eth**: > Maybe one day truely safe Amsterdam-style cycling in the city will be possible. Personally I think Berlin is safer to cycle than Amsterdam currently. Of course there much more cycling roads in Amsterdam and motorists are more aware. But Amsterdam has become so busy with cyclists, also now w/ multiple speeds of popular electric bikes and so-called fat bikes that go very fast cycling has become and is becoming more dangerous. Lots of accidents and almost accidents, at rush hours stuff gets crazy. There’s regulation coming to curb the fat bikes. But maybe currently the bike has become a bit too popular :) **sileo.eth**: My cycling experience in Berlin was pretty good, very flat and quite well indicated, even during road works. That said, I completely get the "less road rage and more peaceful ride" side of things **timdaub.eth**: Ok granted Amsterdam is chaotic Misha. In Berlin it‘s not so much the average experience. More the outlier experience of having a few really crazy close calls from having to share the road with cars. I don‘t consider other bikers as dangerous as cars tbh. I feel like the chance to be super badly injured by a car is quite high, whereas a crash with a bike may still have all sorts of outcomes, no? But I get what you‘re saying, I‘ve been in Amsterdam 2 years ago and during rush hour it was nuts. **mishaderidder.eth**: What I also like about cycling in Berlin is that you have these nice long stretches and you can bike very fast without having to break all the time. There’s just a lot of space. But I’m also biased since I think Berlin is a very cool city and biking through Berlin also feels very cool lol. But admit car dangers are much bigger in Berlin, in that respect Amsterdam is a lot safer. But watch out for taxi’s in Amsterdam, they are relentless and will push off the road if they can. But what is nice in Amsterdam that from the safety your bike you can curse everything and everyone out loud, as it’s culturally acceptable.