I bumped into an old mate recently. We used to work together, ride together, socialise together. We didn’t so much as drift apart, but for whatever reasons, new jobs, new houses, we just didn’t see each other. It’s always good to see him, have a catch up and then go back to our respective lives. Usually ends with a loose offer to have a drink or a ride.

He’s usually fitter than me, but that doesn’t mean we can’t ride together. We have challenged each other in mountain bike marathons, ridden the cobbles in Belgium, sat next to each other for hours on end just turning the cranks. It was my turn to offer the ‘let’s catch up for a ride’ line, expecting the obligatory ‘yeah cool, let me know’ which inevitably leads to not catching up for a ride. But this time the answer was more forthcoming, different, blunt.

“I don’t ride for fun anymore.” Delivered without his usual chirpy laugh at the end, I knew he was serious. He was doing something called training, which doesn’t involve fun, apparently. Only end goals. I’ve trained for end goals before, and I know it can be a wad of suffering, but the suffering led to the end goal, and if it was achieved, satisfaction, happiness, fun?

I’ve realised it a lot lately, that a lot of riders don’t want to have fun. Or maybe they are just bitter because you are having more fun than them. Especially in the mountain bike sector of my cycling sphere, where I hear it all the time… somehow, going slower and working harder are more fun than going faster, for longer, further, and adding more challenges to the ride. I admit, mountain biking for me hadn’t been as fun for a few years, the reward vs work ratio just wasn’t balancing in the right way. Loved the descents and the speed, hated the grovel. Yet the grovel on gravel and road was still fun. Irony, paradox, whatever.

When something becomes a chore, you’re not going to enjoy it, so you either put the joy back into it, or stop doing it. Just walk away, because it’s not going to get any better. Those around you won’t enjoy it either. It’s classic punk ethos. “Oh bollocks, why should I carry on?” In a way, I think he was doing us both a favour, saving us from a potentially unpleasant and uncomfortable situation, a public unravelling of something that could still be saved by just not doing it.

I wonder if he’s having fun now.