Will you continue cycling as normal during coronavirus?

manglier

awavey said:

manglier said:

Please define, "White van man," because I'm really curious.

Ill let the urban dictionary do it https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=white van man

A bit like all cyclists being RLJers and riding three abreast then, hm?

manglier

fenix said:

Ignoring urban dictionary - it's men in white vans delivering all over the country and helping keeping us going.

Not sure I've ever had trouble with a WVM when out cycling either ?

Some of us are even cyclists!

david37

I intend to keep on riding, now is a good time because it's not so hot I cant take enough water for a 4 hour ride so 70 /75 miles is fine, poss up to 80. Thats far enough to keep me happy without getting dehydrated.

I'll have to rethink routes and duration once it warms up but apart from that, riding alone will be a big help to household stress levels.

bianchimoon

Some advice here from Cycling UK
https://www.cyclinguk.org/article/coronavirus-qa-it-safe-cycle
Suns shining, work quiet. Time for a stress buster!

Charlie_Croker

david37 said:

I intend to keep on riding, now is a good time because it's not so hot I cant take enough water for a 4 hour ride so 70 /75 miles is fine, poss up to 80. Thats far enough to keep me happy without getting dehydrated.

I'll have to rethink routes and duration once it warms up but apart from that, riding alone will be a big help to household stress levels.

I wish it would warm up, I went on a 35 mile ride yesterday, that wind (little as it was) was bitter! bring on the summer

N0bodyOfTheGoat

Short pootle on the Voodoo earlier in that bitter north easterly breeze was brutal!

amrushton

Yes. Cafes can serve take out food so will get a cake and eat it outside somewhere

pblakeney

Conspiracy theorists now point the finger at MacDonalds. 😉

bianchimoon

Talking of which, I do find I’m either stress or comfort (not sure which) eating/ drinking more than average. I started the year with the diet going so well as well 🙁

david37

Charlie_Croker said:

david37 said:

I intend to keep on riding, now is a good time because it's not so hot I cant take enough water for a 4 hour ride so 70 /75 miles is fine, poss up to 80. Thats far enough to keep me happy without getting dehydrated.

I'll have to rethink routes and duration once it warms up but apart from that, riding alone will be a big help to household stress levels.

I wish it would warm up, I went on a 35 mile ride yesterday, that wind (little as it was) was bitter! bring on the summer

lovely and warm today, I had 130 sunny isolated miles. All F in day. longest ride of the year so far and it felt easy,

neeb

bianchimoon said:

Talking of which, I do find I’m either stress or comfort (not sure which) eating/ drinking more than average. I started the year with the diet going so well as well 🙁

Me too. I suspect it's low-level stress / cortisol. We're all in a very weird situation right now and deep-seated psychophysiological responses will effectively be preparing us for strife / famine / hard times or whatever. Getting out on the bike is probably a great way of dealing with that.

froze

YES, YES, YES. Virus is carried by air droplets from an infected person, if that person sneezes those droplets can carry up to a max of 6 feet, so I know for a fact that I'm extremely safe while riding my bike.

neeb

France now joined Italy and Spain in banning recreational cycling..
https://www.cyclist.co.uk/news/7904/france-latest-country-to-ban-recreational-cycling?fbclid=IwAR0R3c5lUrxvSjQKy5piDfB8t-M9jOJ-uoslndU-7SXGosqTrQN2j47CcW8

To me this is completely illogical. Assuming the particular cycling activity isn't unusually dangerous, any extra stresses on the health services will be much less than for many indoor activities that have much fewer benefits for physcial and psychological health. The only rational reason I can think of for doing this is that if someone is seen out cycling, you can't know for certain that they have been isolating from other people and not stopping and touching things.

fenix

Bunches of cyclists have been out and about today. Bloody stupid. If you're going through and off you'd only need one person with the virus to infect the lot of you.

Listen to the doctor's. They're sh*tting themselves over this. We should be too.

Play safe and stay away from people and for god's sake don't end up in a&e.

Take care of yourselves.

pblakeney

Only riding should be solo.
Explains the need for toilet paper. 😉

zest28

I am going to return to Zwift as some cyclists are apparently not adhering to social distancing.

dannbodge

I'm planning on getting out every morning and cycling to the office then coming home (Even though I'm working from home)

photonic69

Went for two rides yesterday. One with my wife then another after lunch with my son. We tried to steer clear of people but there were so many out it was worrying.

steve_sordy

I will continue to self-isolate in the forest as normal. I hardly ever see anyone there and it is easy to keep a good distance. I have been avoiding the obstacles that usually have my heart in my mouth just before I commit as I sure don't want to be visiting A&E any time soon.

dinnyboy

Went for a solo ride this morning and passed a group of about 20 riders out on a club run in tight formation, unbelievable! This was near Scotter, Lincs. All of these cyclists could have gone out for a solo ride but because of selfish arrogant behaviour like this we may all be denied this privilege very soon.

joe_totale-2

I went out for a solo ride this morning, loads of groups of 5-6 riders out and about.

There's a cafe at the top of Ide Hill which has remained open as it's also a community shop, loads of cyclists still thought it'd be fine to have a cafe stop there.

If recreational cycling gets banned in this country it'll partly be down to some cyclists being so bloody stupid.

neeb

Lovely 60 mile solo ride today - at no point was I within 2m of another human being (except perhaps one or two behind car windows..). I actually went to some effort to strictly adhere to that, e.g. moving out into the middle of the road to keep away from the odd pedestrian on a narrow pavement, stopping a little further back from pedestrian crossings etc.

Didn't see any large groups of cyclists out, but a few small groups of two or three people - maybe some of them would have been families / partners, but definitely not all. At one point saw a couple of old gents on bikes - must have been in their 70s at least so in the vulnerable group.. Perhaps they were a gay couple or otherwise co-habiting, but somehow I doubt it! But cyclists aside there were loads of people congregating in small groups, a remarkable percentage of whom looked as if they were over 70 - most of the others (families aside) were kids and teenagers.

The roads in town were definitely quieter than usual, but the minor A roads in the countryside were just as busy as usual.. You wonder what all of those people in saloon cars and 4x4s were doing driivng around the country on a Sunday that didn't involve close contact with others.. Not shopping (not on those particular roads). Maybe they were all going for solo bird watching trips or just liked driving round in circles to get out of the house, but again, I'm skeptical.. ;-)

If people would just do what they are currently being told to do we would all be fine. But a significant percentage won't, and we'll all suffer as a result, from more draconian prohibitions and enforcement as well as deaths from the virus.

Quite aside from moral responsibility for others, from a purely selfish PoV I'd really rather not catch this thing - my chances of dying are probably quite low but if you are just a little unlucky there's a significant chance of being very unpleasantly ill in a very frightening and chaotic environment and losing 20% of your lung function.. Not good for your VO2 max or FTP.. ;-)

ugo.santalucia

Sobering thought of the day: by my calculations, on Saturday there were around half a million people with the virus in the UK, mostly asymptomatic, but still contagious, half of which in London. It doubles every 4 days or so, by next weekend there will be about 1.5-2 million...

This is based on one fact: it takes 9-10 days between contagion and positive test, so there is a significant delay.
And one assumption generally accepted: only 1 in 10 who get the virus will get tested

Dorset_Boy

I suspect a lot of Londoners left London on Friday and won't be returning for a while, and are not spreading the virus around the rural communities.

ugo.santalucia

Dorset_Boy said:

I suspect a lot of Londoners left London on Friday and won't be returning for a while, and are not spreading the virus around the rural communities.

There is no evidence of a mass exodus from the capital. Roads were very quiet, including motorways

Longshot

I went out for a solo ride yesterday and there were a lot of others out there. To be fair, most were riding solo but there still some groups.

mrfpb

On my short solo ride yesterday I saw one big family group - about a dozen, three generations, walking together. At least, I guess, they're keeping it in the family if they have the virus. Apart from that it was solo riders, couples or parent + child groups. I'm fortunate to have lots of countryside around me and my kids are old enough to go out on their own. I'd hate to be in a high rise flat with a couple of toddlers.

neeb

mrfpb said:

On my short solo ride yesterday I saw one big family group - about a dozen, three generations, walking together. At least, I guess, they're keeping it in the family if they have the virus.

I think this is one of the biggest problems - extended family groups who don't live in the same household, perhaps not in the same part of the country, who think it's OK to keep meeting and mixing. Any case of the virus in one sub-group is then going to be distributed amongst all, and potentially then anyone else they come into contact with locally.

bianchimoon

The government directive that walking, running and cycling alone or with family members are all approved during the lockdown was a great relief. Saw 5 or 6 on a 30 miler yesterday afternoon, all being sensible riding alone.

First.Aspect

I live rurally and it has been absolutely mental, around 10x the traffic and footfall as normal over the weekend. My neighbours have suddenly started going for walks together - one a teacher and the other with long term health conditions. There has been a sort of national mania.

Even yesterday when I went out for a quick blast at lunchtime, lots of pull outs were occupied with city folk sat in cars looking perplexed about what one is supposed to do "outdoors" when you actually get there.

I am baffled but pleased that they are still allowing cycling. I was expecting us to be treated like lepers at the earliest possible opportunity. I wonder whether the govt have calculated that it is better overall to allow those who do need to get to work the option of cycling, given that there's pretty much no public transport.

I suspect that "getting exercise once a day" will very soon be explicitly understood to exclude 100 km weekend rides though chaps.

I managed to find a smart trainer still in stock as a precaution.