Bradleigh Phelps (1984) Birmingham (UK)
Hello everyone! I’m Brad, a keen cyclist from the UK. I’m 33 and this is my short story of how and why I became addicted to cycling.
Rewind to 2014 and I was a keen bodybuilder with no interest in bikes at all however, I decided I needed to do more cardio and as such I purchased a cheap £189 road bike. The ride to the gym was 2 miles each way but the enjoyment was apparent straight away, this was much more fun than lifting weights in a gym! From there I found myself riding instead of going to the gym and the obsession (and ridiculous spending) began.
I always want to challenge myself to do more, so as the years went by my mileage targets kept increasing. From 4,000, 6,000 to 8,000 when finally I rode every day for a year between April 2016 to April 2017 covering 15,416.2 miles or 42.2 a day. I didn’t actually set out to do it, it just kind of happened. I’d done a week in a row, maybe I could do two? and so on. I was struck down with the flu towards the end of the challenge and despite recording my lowest weekly mileage for the whole year I kept it going albeit with severely reduced miles for that week. On the final day myself and two friend rode from Birmingham to Weston Super Mare and back, covering 227 miles in less than 14 hours – my furthest ever ride too which perfectly finished the challenge off.
I get a lot of questions about how I could ride so much without being tired or sore but I always found the body just got used to it after a week or so. Now if I don’t ride all the time I actually feel worse for it!
See you on Instagram!
@cyclingbrad33
allblack cycling club 