lots of interesting discussions today 
Strava is a funny one for me. It’s never made me feel the urge to go out and clock up the miles or days spent on the bike; I have a mileage goal for the week/year but it’s relatively arbitrary, and although I get sad a lot about not being out on a bike it’s because I’m not on a bike rather than because I’m not hitting those targets.
That said, Strava segments are different; I do chase PRs and KOMs constantly, there’s no point in pretending otherwise, and when some rando (or particularly) one of my semi-official club pals (we’ve started a wee club, but it’s still pretty informal - looking into getting jerseys made soon) either beats my time or takes a KOM from me it’s very much “game on!” in my mind and I will go out and try my best to smash it when time, weather and my legs allow. I can see how it would start getting obsessive for people but thankfully I’ve never gotten to that stage; overall I’m doing it to better myself and a PR is the most important thing - if chasing an impossible time gains me a few more seconds then I’m so happy.
This all suggests that a lot of my cycling is done for training or performance (meant in the ‘striving to improve and do the best i possibly can’ rather than ‘showing off’) sense, and again it’s true. It is at odds with a lot of people, but in my relatively short cycling journey I am learning that what you enjoy doing on a bike is the most important thing; those things might be the same as other folk and they might not but that doesn’t matter. I do have lots of bike anxieties it is true (you’ve all seen me post about those) but they’re more about not feeling confident as a group cyclist, bike maintenance and other things that the putative “perfect cyclist” can do and I need to learn “it doesn’t matter”.
I am very time-limited for cycling at the moment thanks to my job, and it’s a bit of an MH drain. I lose an extra 2 hours a day compared to my old job due to the long commute, and my free time is now almost never at the times of day I’d find it most useful (I basically do not have weekday evenings any more, which is really hurting me now that summer is here). Because of that lack of time I’m probably spending most of my bike time doing “hard” cycles; I love going for nice easy pleasant cycles but I also love pushing myself to the limit on a bike and if I only have time for one I’m going to focus on the latter. Getting fitter is important to me, and I do slightly lament the loss of fitness I had compared to last summer when I was on furlough and had all the time in the world to cycle. Interestingly, that loss of fitness (which Strava says is massive, >50% in a year according to their graphs and however they calculate those odd metrics) hasn’t manifested itself in terms of endurance - that’s noticeably gotten better this last year. High end stuff, though, like big and repeated VO2+ efforts has seen a massive drop-off in fitness though. I’d like to get it back but it doesn’t bother me too much ultimately, and I’m not going to hurt myself or neglect other aspects of life to chase ultimately arbirtrary and meaningless goals. As long as I am enjoying my cycling all is good, and I really really love my cycling just now.
Rest days - yeah, I have too many of those for my liking just now, enforced partly due to a mix of job, shit weather and laziness. Still, I do consider them very important for myself and I don’t go near my bike if my legs are telling me not to. Rest days when you’re getting in all the cycling you’d like are amazing; enforced “oh god, not another washout” days are not. This is why I love Zwift so much and continue using it in the summer - what with bad weather and odd working hours it means I can still cycle when the urge is there, even if the outdoors doesn’t comply. Some weeks I don’t get home from from work until 11pm but because of my night owl body clock I’m absolutely buzzing and desperate for a bike - this is when Zwifty races are my saviour and I love doing them so much. I know Zwift and indoor cycling has a mixed response here, but that’s fine - I genuinely love it but understand why folk don’t. Overall, everybody should enjoy their cycling the way they want to enjoy it, and try not to worry about what other people are doing
(sorry for the essay, I am in a bikey rambly mood because I just got back from doing the Bealach na Ba and it was the most amazing thing I have ever done in my life 
)
(Just saw the topic of Strava notifications - I dunno what is available or what you can turn on or off, but all mine does is tell me when I’ve received kudos, gotten a comment or completed a challenge. Definitely nothing peformance or stat related other than the challenge thing)
