Top Ten Reasons To Go on a Bike Ride
When the weather is good, the paths are dry, and the outdoors are calling, do you really need any more reasons to go on a bike ride?
Whether you’re just getting started with cycling or if you’re looking for a new hobby to help you stay active (or get active in the first place), cycling is a great sport to try and see the world on your own two wheels!
If you need more persuasion to saddle up, we’re going to give you ten reasons to get on your bike and get out there!
Here are our top ten favorite ones to convince you to get up and get moving:
1. It’s great for your Physical Health.
From physically to mentally to emotionally, getting your cardio in by riding your bike can be a highly effective way to get moving around your town or exploring trails in the forest.
By being fit and focusing on this cardiovascular activity, you’re helping your health journey to getting a healthier heart, stronger muscles, better bones, and high peak endurance.
By staying in control with the kind of biking you’re doing, you can always increase your heart rate with different kinds of cycling—from sprinting to interval training, hill climbing to long, leisurely rides.
At first, getting started on your bike can be a bit difficult. You’ll have to get used to some bumps along the way (literally). However, after you get over that initial hill (also literally) and learning curve, riding can be a fun, pleasant, and effective experience for your health.
If you have an overall goal of being fit, biking can help you get there in so many ways!
2. It’s great for your mental health 
Need to clear your head? Go on a bike ride. The exercise that you do on a bike ride, provokes a chemical reaction in your brain—reducing the amount of cortisol—which is a stress hormone.
If you’re biking in the outdoors, this can also leave some positive results in your noggin—moving out in the open can help you feel revitalized, energized, and optimistic.
Cycling can also help you reduce your anxiety. Since it’s low-to-no impact, as well, this can be great for those of us who are struggling with pain or injury that normally comes on with running or other impacting exercises. Being able to get out there and exercise can help boost your mood
3. It’s great for your emotional health.
Reducing stress and pressing reset on your emotions are both great things that happen when you are able to do when you take your bike out for a ride.
4. It can be an effective means of transportation.
There are so many reasons why choosing a bike over a car can be the better choice—for both you and for the environment.
Instead of relying solely on cars, buses, and even ride-sharing carpools, you can take saving the environment one step further by hopping on a “vehicle” that requires no gas emissions. This can help you do your part in saving the world!
Especially since air pollution has been such a growing problem, choosing your bike as a means of transportation can help reduce carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, sulfur oxides, and hydrocarbon in the atmosphere around us.
One less car on the road—although it doesn’t seem like much can make a huge difference in the long run.
5. No more fighting for a parking space!
Ever get to where you’re going on time but then spend five or ten minutes looking for a parking space? Well, arriving at your desired location on a bicycle can help you save those extra precious minutes because you don’t have to find parking.
Parking for bikes is also often found right in the entrance or front of a building! This can help save you the time it takes to park your car in the back of a parking lot (the only place you found a spot), and make your way to the building
6. No more sitting in traffic!
What about traffic? You’ll definitely feel like you’re speeding through the streets when you’re on a bicycle. From having your own lane where you’re often not met with hundreds of cars in front of you to having your own traffic light in some cities, cyclists have it made when it comes to transportation in a big city.
You can also make your way to the front at red lights since you’ll have the right of way! Car, bus, and even train traffic tends to get congested during rush hour—and although there is some chance that there will also be other bikers on the road, too, you won’t have the same problems as you would with a car and with another motorized vehicle
7. It can save you money.
We have already mentioned that your body, your emotions, your mental health, and the environment around you can all benefit from a bike ride—well, what about your financial situation.
Especially in larger cities where public transportation can actually be quite expensive, choosing the more “environmentally friendly” route on the bus or on the train can leave you hurting in your bank account even though you’re technically helping the world around you (why should you get the short end of the stick?).
If you choose to be an environmental-friendly commuter, biking can help save the atmosphere from harmful gas emissions but also save your wallet from harmful gas prices! Biking can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars on gas, bus tickets, parking tickets, speeding tickets, and train passes.
8. You can have fun!
Why do anything if you’re not having a good time doing it?
Cycling shouldn’t just be about getting from point A to point B. It is a great method of exercise that can help you get a bit of enjoyment throughout your day. If you’re looking for a literal way to escape the mundane motions of the world, get out in the sun, and get moving, going for a bike ride can be a fun, easy, healthy, and cheap way to get some happiness into your day.
9. Going on a bike ride can also help you see the world—
From a new perspective, too. How many times have you gotten your car, turned the ignition on, and then just a few minutes later, find yourself at your destination without even remembering how you’ve gotten there? Biking keeps you in perspective and keeps you concentrated and focused throughout the ride—for fear of your own safety, of course! You can choose a path where you’re not having to worry too much about pedestrians and other cyclists or drivers. This can help you zone out and see the world in a new way—on paths you wouldn’t normally go on otherwise. It can easily turn your average daily walk into a longer-distanced exploration time.
10. You can make friends!
Eventually, we hope that riding your bike becomes an enjoyable experience for you. And as you continue to enjoy it more and more, there’s a pretty big chance that you’ll meet some people on your way that also enjoy the same activity as you.
You may have sought out to make friends on a bike ride or contacted your local biking group to see if you can meet other like-minded individuals.
However, either way, cycling is a means of transportation and an activity that you can do on your own or even together.
Who knows, you might even meet your spouse—or it could be a great way for you and your spouse to reconnect after years (ever heard of a tandem bike)!
In Conclusion Reasons to Saddle Up:
Although we’ve rounded up ten reasons why you could possibly want to go on a bike ride, passionate riders like you and I could probably come up with pages and pages of different motivations as to why you would want to get on your bike and go!
However, if you’re on the fence in deciding whether or not you should buy a bike or not, we hope that these reasons can present you with a pretty good argument as to why you would want to get started with cycling in the first place!
So whether you’re investing in a new means of transportation to get you from point A to point B or if you want something that can help you get moving after being stagnant for a while, there are so many ways you could benefit from a bike ride.
You can also consider getting a rental bike for a little while just to see if you enjoy riding. However, once you know that you like it, you can then invest a little bit in a used or new bike to go enjoy the outdoors!
We hope this article has helped show you ten of our favorite reasons as to why to go on a bike ride, today