I’m incredibly fortunate to share a passion for cycling with my significant other. We’ve enjoyed unforgettable moments together on the bike but also faced challenges navigating cycling as a couple, each with our own preferences, goals, strengths, and weaknesses. In this series, I’ll share what I learned along the way, which I hope will inspire you to get even more out of riding together.
Start with an open discussion
The first step in setting effective cycling goals together is open communication. It’s crucial to sit down and discuss what each person truly wants out of cycling. Is it a specific race they want to do well in? Do they want to finish a century ride? Is it about losing weight and getting in shape? By clearly expressing these individual ambitions, you can start to identify overlapping objectives. Encourage the other to be honest, even if their goals don’t align with yours. Even if your goals differ, there are ways in which you can complement each other.
Finding common ground
After you list all the different goals you both have in cycling, it’s time to look for overlaps. For example, if one partner’s goal is to train for a long-distance event while the other’s is to lose weight, a common intermediate goal might be to commit to a structured weekly training schedule. And even if some of the training sessions will be different, you can still both encourage each other to stick to the schedule and help each other get back on track.
Another effective exercise is to create monthly mini-challenges that both partners can tackle together, like increasing weekly distance or elevation, exploring new routes or even participating in a cycling event. You can draw inspiration from Strava or Garmin Connect, which offer these kinds of challenges every month.
How did we do it?
A recent example is that my girlfriend wants to complete her first century ride this season. I bought my first mountain bike in January after 15 years on road bikes. So, my goals for the year are more about all-day adventures in the forest with a lot of trails, fun descents, climbing, and handling rough terrain.
At first, we were kind of bummed because it seemed like we would be spending most of our time riding separately, she would be on her road bike, racking up the miles while I would be in the forests working on my trail riding skills. But we soon realised that there’s actually a lot of common ground. We both need to build up a decent amount of endurance, and we both want to ride regularly and often. So, here are some of the ways we spend time together on the bike and enjoy some intermediate goals.
- We both join the same Strava and Garmin distance challenges and celebrate when we hit them early in the month.
- We do one long ride on the weekend to get the endurance gains. Plus, this gives us several hours on the bike together every week. It’s usually on the road, as my girlfriend doesn’t have an MTB.
- For shorter rides, we share about 15 km of a cycling path that leads me to the closest trail area and her just outside of the city. It’s nice to start the ride together, even if we split later. And the fun part is, we sometimes run into each other on the way back.
- We go on road bike rides that involve a bit of gravel, forest paths, and other off-roading. These are usually not too difficult but it helps us both develop confidence on the bike.
You could say that we are both compromising a little bit. I probably shouldn’t do 5-hour rides on a road bike if I want to get my trail riding skills up as quickly as I can. And my girlfriend shouldn’t be wasting her rides on gravel and off-road if her century ride is on asphalt. But these small adjustments and ways to find common ground help us stay connected a lot more in cycling. And my prediction? I’m probably going to do my first century ride with her, too. And she’s probably getting a trail bike next year. What do you reckon?
