According to my latest birthday, I’ve now been ‘into’ cycling (as opposed to just pulling skids and haring around the local neighbourhood making motorbike noises) for very nearly 40 years.
It’s a long time. More years than I care to think about if I’m honest, though there have been a ton of great adventures along the way. But there are few periods that stand out more than those initial heady years as a young teenager when I was discovering cycling as a sport and pastime.
There was a line in the book about the beneficial effects of exercise on the brain that always stuck with me – so much so that I plagiarised it in my year nine English textbook (yes, I even wrote essays about cycling when I could).
The ‘Cyclists High Report’ also highlighted a doubling of Google searches for ‘cycling for mental health’, while the number of articles exploring the subject has jumped from 40,400 in September 2024 to 94,100 in October 2025 – presumably 94,101 by the time I’ve finished this one. There are also 28 million TikTok videos on the topic ‘Ride a bike for mental health’.
Only recently, my colleague Andy Carr wrote about his two-wheeled mental health journey, coming back from stress and burnout. Elsewhere, Amy Hudson completed the entire Tour de France route (and transfers) in 29 days, celebrating the sport that helped her recover her mental health and raising £89,000 for mental health charity Shout.
