Cycling tips, especially at the start of the year, are almost always about quantifiable goals like distance and speed. But what if you could find motivation for throwing your leg over the top tube not in fitness goals, but because doing so stokes your sense of curiosity, deepens your sense of compassion, and delivers moments of pure joy?
We can’t expect every ride to deliver all of this, but approaching each ride as an adventure definitely increases the odds. What does it mean to approach each ride as an adventure? It means riding in a way that leads to “encounters with the unexpected.” For me, that’s the gist of adventure. I’ve written about it here and here.
The problem is that unexpected things can be either delightful or dreadful, and the dreadful ones–like getting stuck–are what we fear. This, I believe, is the number one reason that people stick to the usual and avoid adventure: The fear of getting lost or having a major mechanical or physical failure that results in being stranded somewhere with no idea how to get home.
So I’ve decided to commit 2025 to 25 tips that will help readers gain confidence in increasing the adventure quotient of their rides. Every other week throughout 2025, The Adventure Almanac will reveal a new tip intended to prepare you for “encounters with the unexpected.” To receive these tips in your inbox, subscribe here.
Tips will range from how to expect the unexpected to how to get unstuck when an unexpected encounter interrupts your adventure. Tips will fall into one of these four categories:
- Route Planning and Navigation
- Ride Logistics
- Equipment
- Rider Preparedness
My hope is that by the end of the year you’ll have a set of tools to rely on to get further outside your comfort zone so that you can stoke your curiosity, deepen your sense of compassion, and find new moments of joy each time you throw your leg over the top tube.
A cycling tips precursor: 3 agreements
If these adventure cycling tips are going to work for you, or if you’re even going to be open to trying them, we have to begin with three important agreements:
- It’s not a race
- Slow down
- There’s always a solution
These are the essential characteristics of what I call the “adventure mindset” for a ride and they’ve gotten me out of some tough situations. A few years ago on the Oregon Timber Trail I had a massive tubeless failure (see photo above). In these situations, I try to make laughter my first reaction. It helps remind me of the first two agreements: “it’s not a race” and “slow down.” When I finish laughing I can get down to the business of figuring out a solution. According to the third agreement, after all, “there’s always a solution.” This is how the adventure mindset functions on a pragmatic level.
On a deeper level, the adventure mindset has a particular type of “why.” What I mean is, why do you ride at all? I revisited Comova’s Vision Statement to remind myself of my ‘why’:
Comova envisions a world where cycling nurtures curiosity, compassion, connection and joy
How can going for a ride result in joy, curiosity, compassion and connection? Here’s where the deeper level of the adventure mindset comes into play. At the heart of an adventure mindset is an openness to exploration and discovery and a willingness to embrace the unexpected. This requires a good dose of humility and acceptance of vulnerability.
Most of us don’t really think about our mindset when we head out on a ride. That probably means that we default to the norms of the cycling groups and cultures we associate with.
Take, for example, the mainstream culture of road cycling. Everyone on the group ride knows it’s not a race. And yet the norms for everything from shoe and sock colors to tire sizes and pressures are always implicitly and often explicitly enforced. From the moment you roll up to the start of the group ride, conversations swirl around aero this, lightweight that, power meters and FTP tests.
This is what I call a racing mindset. It’s a great mindset to have if your goal is to win races. It might also be a useful mindset if your goals are simply about fitness and health. If these are your answers to the “why I ride” question, stop reading here.
What if your “why” has to do with deeper (and maybe even existential) ideas about purpose and meaning? Suppose you have a sense that your bike rides can be opportunities to stoke your sense of curiosity, deepen your sense of compassion, and discover simple joys. Well, then you already have an adventure mindset. But it probably needs some nurturing (especially if you come out of a road cycling background).
Adventure Cycling Tip #1 is going to be an important first step in developing your adventure mindset. Ready to find out what it is?
The image below provides a hint. Click on through to discover what Tip #1 is about.
