It’s no surprise the pandemic boom in cycling is over

In modern society, we live with a conundrum: there’s no need to endure physical discomfort of any kind, but unless you embrace it via exercise, it comes for you in the form of chronic illness. Good exercise can be very painful, however. In the case of the sport of cycling, agonisingly and unnecessarily so.

Put it this way, the news today didn’t surprise me. Sales of bicycles have dropped to their lowest level in 20 years, apparently, as the pandemic boom in cycling has turned to bust. Or to put it another way, as tens of thousands of people come to their senses.

I speak, of course, as a cyclist myself. Here’s how I got the bug. When I turned 40, I had a health-check. When I look at pictures of myself from that time, I appear like a different person. Not just physically – I was soft around the edges, pallid, comfortable – but in spirit.