We’ve already sung the praises in our piece on the unexpected benefits of cycling.
But anyone who has ridden for a few seasons knows the brochure leaves a few pages out. The downsides of cycling aren’t deal breakers. They are the creaks, costs, and quirks you learn to live with. Here’s what they look like up close, how big each one really is, and the habit that keeps it small.
1. Something Always Aches
You roll home happy, then you try to look over your shoulder while parking the car. Your neck says no.
Cycling holds you in one shape for hours. Back bent, neck craned, knees pumping the same circle thousands of times.
In one large survey from 1995, researchers asked 518 recreational riders about overuse problems. About 85% reported at least one, with neck pain most common at 48.8%, followed by knees at 41.7%, groin and buttocks at 36.1%, hands at 31.1%, and back at 30.3%.
🔧 I get neck, back and knee aches. Stopping regularly and doing some basic stretches against a wall helps. A bike fit has helped too, and I’m due another one.
Stop before you seize up, stretch against a wall, and get your position checked. For sore knees, our guide to avoiding knee pain walks through the setup tweaks.
For a sore back, start with our guide to avoiding back pain.
And then there’s the ache that comes with a tingle attached.
2. Things Go Numb
Every rider knows the shake-out. You lift one hand, wiggle the fingers, put it back down and hope the pins and needles stay away for another ten minutes.
The numbers behind that tingle come from very long days. In a 373-mile (600 km) event, 23 of 25 riders finished with hand symptoms. In a 336-mile (540 km) tour, about 30% reported finger numbness and 22% of men reported saddle-area nerve symptoms in that Norwegian touring-race study.
Those are extreme distances, not your Saturday loop.
The saddle-area version has a formal name. Cyclist’s Syndrome is compression of the pudendal nerve from prolonged saddle pressure, which can cause numbness, tingling, or sharp pain around the groin. It’s also known as Alcock syndrome.
Here’s the reassuring part. In large surveys, male cyclists reported sexual function no worse than runners and swimmers, and female cyclists no worse than non-cyclists. Numbness is common and annoying.
The fix is gloriously boring. Change hand position often and stand out of the saddle regularly. Padded gloves and a proper fit help, and any numbness is a signal to ease off, take a break, and reassess position.
Our picks for gloves for numb hands cover the hand half.
And then there are saddle sores, a separate pain with its own guide to stop saddle sores.
One body part barely feels cycling at all, and that is the problem in the next section.
3. Your Bones Don’t Get the Memo
Your heart and legs get fitter every season. Your skeleton just sits there, unloaded, watching the ride go by.
Road cycling is non-weight-bearing. You’re supported by the saddle, so your bones don’t get much of the thump that tells them to stay dense.
Researchers found adult road cyclists in regular training tend to have low bone density in the lower spine, with no real bone-building benefit from road riding alone. Mixing in other sports may help offset it.
So give your frame some impact. Strength work, plus walking, jogging, or jumping if your joints allow it, helps cover what the bike misses. We go deeper in why cyclists have weak bones.
Bones aside, most of us worry more about the road itself.
4. Traffic Is the Risk Everyone Pictures
It’s the downside non-riders mention first. You feel it too on a narrow lane when a mirror passes a little too close.
The official count helps keep it in proportion. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported 1,103 pedalcyclists killed in US traffic crashes in 2024, down 6% from 1,173 in 2023, with an estimated 52,887 injured. Those figures are from the 2024 traffic safety facts.
More than half of the deaths happened in the dark, and light trucks (SUVs, pickups, and vans) were the vehicle type most often involved in single-vehicle fatal crashes.
Just make yourself hard to miss.
Ride with lights day and night and pick calmer routes. Bright front and rear lights, predictable lane position, clear signals, and a route with a shoulder or bike lane do more than any lucky charm.
We break down roadcraft in avoiding dangerous driver encounters.
But the crash you picture probably isn’t the crash you’ll have.
5. Most Crashes Don’t Involve a Car at All
Ask around the cafe stop and you hear the same stories. A damp white line. A curb glanced at slow speed. Gravel where the trail meets the road.
Hospital data backs up the gossip. Across an international review of crashes, between 60% and 95% of cyclists treated in hospital or emergency departments got there after a solo crash, with no other road user involved. Falls, curbs, slippery surfaces.
Fatal crashes are a different pattern and more often involve a motor vehicle, but the everyday injury is usually just you and the ground.
⚠️ I crashed a week before an event. My rear wheel slipped out from under me on a damp corner. Luckily it was very slow. I bent my rear derailleur but still managed to ride home slowly, and I badly bruised my hips. Nothing was broken, and I was OK for the event, though still bruised.
Slow down earlier than feels necessary on damp corners, wet leaves, and painted road markings, and keep tires fresh enough to grip. If you do hit the deck, our guide to returning after a crash helps with the rebuild.
Solo spills are one thing. Solo miles from home are another.
6. Riding Alone Has Its Own Risks
Half the joy of cycling is disappearing down a quiet road by yourself. The worry is what happens if the quiet road wins.
It’s pure logistics. If you fall alone with no signal, no ID, and nobody expecting you, a simple off becomes complicated fast. Families feel it too, and plenty of partners quietly worry every time you head out solo.
👍 I ride about half my miles solo and half in groups. I always carry ID and a wallet, so I can get home if the worst happens.
The fix fits in a jersey pocket. Carry ID, your phone, and a card or cash on every solo ride. Tell someone your loop or share live location from your phone or bike computer, and stick roughly to the plan.
Our guide to solo rides has the full checklist.
The bike you disappear on is where the spending starts.
7. Your Wallet Will Never Fully Recover
Nobody warns you that the bike is just the entry ticket. Then come the shoes, the computer, the better wheels, the rain jacket that actually keeps rain out.
Cyclists joke about N+1, where the correct number of bikes is the number you own plus one. It’s funny because it keeps happening. One upgrade teaches you what the next upgrade could feel like, and suddenly you can explain bottom bracket standards at dinner.
💡 My first bike cost $500. Now I ride bikes worth several thousand dollars. Totally worth it, for the fitness, the experiences and my mental health.
Still, spend smart. Put fit and contact points before carbon bling. A proper fit, tires you trust, bibs that don’t chafe, and gloves that suit your hands beat a lighter seatpost every time.
For laughs, read how to justify your next bike.
For caution, see our rundown of the biggest waste of money in gear.
Money, at least, comes back. Weekend hours are the bigger bill.
8. It Eats Your Time (and Sometimes Your Relationships)
A three-hour ride is never three hours. There is prep, travel to the start, the cafe stop that becomes lunch, cleanup, and laundry. Do that most weekends and the people at home notice.
Research on partners of ultra-endurance athletes found training could strain balance and equality at home. Couples who negotiated training time could keep things harmonious, while an obsessive passion for the sport bred conflict.
Riders echo the same pattern. Time causes more friction than money, especially long weekend rides with long stops while someone else covers kids and chores.
It’s unglamorous, and it works. Agree ride times in advance and be home when you said. Early starts help. So does trading weekends and skipping the second pastry when the group settles in for an hour.
See our piece on cycling and marriage strain.
The next downside lives between your ears.
9. Your Head Can Turn Against You
Two gadgets can quietly change the sport. One sits on your handlebar. The other sits in your head.
First the handlebar one. In experiments on walking and reading, researcher Jordan Etkin found measuring output made people do more but enjoy it less, because the activity started to feel like work. That wasn’t a cycling study, but Strava users will recognize the mechanism.
Chasing segments turns a sunny spin into an exam.
❤️ I do track my rides, but I’m not obsessed with it. I mainly use the data to watch my heart rate while I ride, to make sure I’m not cooking myself.
Use data that way, as a governor rather than a scoreboard, and leave the computer home on some rides or set uploads to private. Ride by feel, stop for the view, sprint only if it makes you grin.
The second gadget is compulsion. In a Spanish amateur cyclist study of 859 endurance cyclists, 17% screened at risk for exercise addiction on a standard questionnaire. That is a risk screen, not a diagnosis.
At-risk riders reported worse sleep and more anxiety than other cyclists, yet even they reported better mental quality of life than inactive adults.
Watch for guilt on rest days. Rest is training too. If motivation curdles into dread, our guide to avoiding cycling burnout resets the balance.
And if the pressure is spoiling the fun, here’s how to stop stressing about cycling.
Your stomach has opinions too.
10. You Can’t Out-Ride Your Fork
You burn a heroic number of calories on a big ride. Then you eat like the ride never happened.
Exercise researchers call the gap energy compensation. Weight loss from exercise is usually less than expected, and in a systematic review of compensation the authors found that in longer programs much of the energy burned was eventually canceled out.
That review covered exercise in general, not cycling specifically, but riders live the same math. Hunger rises, portions creep, and the post-ride treat becomes a second dinner.
There’s no spot-reduction trick here. Belly fat answers to steady habits, not a single long loop.
🍌 Over time I learned to eat well before a ride and during it. That helps a lot.
Starting fueled and sipping carbs on the bike keeps you from arriving home starving and emptying the fridge standing up. Eat before and during long rides to control hunger after.
For the seasonal version of the same battle, see our piece on winter weight gain.
Fuel handled. Now look up. That bright sky is plotting against you too.
11. The Sun and the Weather Are Out to Get You
Cyclists spend hours with their backs, necks, arms, and legs offered up to the sky. Sunscreen lives in the bathroom cabinet.
In a survey of 1,018 cyclists in Spain, 45.6% said they had been sunburned in the previous year and only 39.2% used sunscreen. Hours of exposure add up fast, especially on long summer rides.
The fix takes two minutes. Apply sunscreen to every exposed bit and reapply on long rides. Ears, back of the neck, backs of hands, thighs above the tan line.
A light cap or helmet liner and glasses help, and our hot-weather cycling guide covers heat tactics.
🌧️ The weather wrecking my plans is the worst part for me, but I’m much better these days at dressing and packing for anything, so it’s less of a problem now.
Layers, a packable rain shell, gloves for descents, and a route with bailout options turn a ruined day into merely a damp one. Which brings us to why we bother at all.
Why We Still Ride
Even the heavier downsides have a counterweight. In that Spanish study, cyclists at risk for compulsion still reported better mental quality of life than inactive adults. Movement pays, even when the relationship with it gets messy.
🚴 For me, the fitness, the improved physical and mental health and the simple good feeling of riding a bike are worth any of the downsides.
Pick the one downside above that sounded most like you and fix that first. Stretch tonight, book the fit, charge the lights, pack the sunscreen.
Know a riding buddy who needs the honest version? Share it below👇
