30/07/2026
The physical activity of cycling is undoubtedly beneficial for health. But cycling with other people & building a community brings further benefits.
My personal experience supports this. We moved to Lochwinnoch in 2016 after 14 years in Aberdeen. We knew nobody in the area & our nearest family were 40 minutes away in Glasgow. Discovering Ride63 led to meeting new people & making new friends. Getting to know complete strangers was so much easier when you end up randomly riding beside them or sitting beside them in a café.
Ten years on & the club has become a central part of my life. I still meet new people & make new friends. Some deep conversations - completely unconnected to cycling - have taken place. Non-cycling partners have become part of the wider circle of my community & the social activities extend beyond riding too (Dram63 🥃😉).
So if you've been thinking about joining a cycling club, just give it a go. You will almost certainly gain more than physical fitness.
Your Sunday group ride is probably doing more for men’s mental health than most corporate wellness programmes & therapy combined.
Nobody calls it therapy.
That is why it works.
A group of men meet in a car park at 8am.
They insult & abuse each other’s equipment.
Argue about tyre pressure.
Pretend not to be cold.
Ride side by side for three hours.
And somewhere between the first climb and the coffee stop, actual life gets discussed.
The business that is struggling.
The parent who is sick.
The relationship that is falling apart.
The anxiety nobody mentioned in the office.
The fear of getting older.
There is no circle of chairs.
Nobody is asked to “share.”
No wellness consultant is taking notes.
They are just moving forward together.
A lot of men communicate better shoulder to shoulder than face to face.
Give them a difficult road, a shared destination and enough time, and the conversation eventually becomes honest.
Modern life has removed many of the places where this used to happen.
The factory floor.
The local club.
The pub where everyone knew your name.
The community organisation.
The football team you stopped playing for at 32.
Work replaced most of it.
Then remote work replaced the people at work.
Now a man can spend five days moving between a laptop, a car and a television without having one meaningful conversation.
We call this efficient.
It is also incredibly lonely!
Cycling accidentally solves part of the problem.
It creates routine.
Shared suffering.
Responsibility.
Belonging.
A reason to show up when you would rather stay in bed.
The group notices when you disappear.
They notice when you are unusually quiet.
They notice when you are riding badly.
They may not ask if you are okay in those exact words.
They might ask why “you’re glued to the road today”?
But the question is still there.
This is why local cycling clubs matter.
Not because the world needs more people chasing Strava segments.
Because adults need somewhere they are expected to appear.
Community is not a WhatsApp group.
It is someone noticing you were not there.
Protect your group ride.
Invite the rider who is drifting away.
Wait at the top of the climb.
The coffee stop might be doing more good than anyone realises.
