Issue 159: Digital Detox

Could you leave all of your electronic gadgets behind on a ride? No GPS, no Strava, no phone. How about three rides in a row? Chipps takes on the challenge.

Tech Specs

Name: Chipps
Always: iPhone (with phone camera and Strava running)
Usually: (as above plus) GPS head unit
Sometimes: GoPro, headphones, heart monitor, power meter, ‘proper’ camera
Never: Smartwatch, drone, 360 camera

Name: James
Always: iPhone (Strava and phone camera)
Sometimes: GoPro, drone, camera
Never: Headphones, heart rate monitor, power meter

Name: Mark
Always: iPhone (Strava and phone camera)
Sometimes: GoPro, drone, camera
Never: Headphones, heart rate monitor, power meter

Words by Chipps, photography as credited.

How many of us ride bikes to escape the daily grind, only to find our precious hours punctuated by texts from co-workers? Or we see the sun come out and light up a beautiful section of trail, but we can’t stop to take in the view as this is the middle of ‘Big Bob’s Bobble’ on Strava and we’re sure there’s a PR in the offing. Or we do stop to photograph the view but fail to also actually appreciate it with our eyeballs at the time.

So much for that digital disconnect on the trails; with phones and GPS units, GoPros, power and heart monitors, many of us find ourselves in the presence of more battery-powered tech on bike rides ‘in nature’ than we do at work. But did that ride really happen if we didn’t Strava it? And did that beautiful patch of sunlight even happen unless you snapped a blurry phone photo of it?

That constant connection with the digital world at the expense of the natural one is something that bothers Ryan Leech. Ryan is a long-time professional trials rider, turned skills coach and mountain bike lifestyle tutor. In between publishing courses on his RLC Hub skills website, he also runs Transcend MTB which offers a more philosophical approach to riding bikes and getting the most out of your experience.

It was an email from this website that caught my attention: it challenged the reader to go on a ‘Digital-Free Ride-Reset’. Three consecutive rides without any digital distractions. “No devices, no apps, no notifications. Just you, your bike, and the trail in nature. It might feel uncomfortable at first, but that’s where the magic happens. By stepping away from the noise (before, during and after your ride), you open yourself up to a riding experience that’s more connected, more present, and infinitely more rewarding.”

How hard can it be?

That sounded like a doable challenge. After all, it’s not like I always have to have a GPS with me, or a GoPro. I wear a wind-up watch and I only use a heart rate monitor on the road bike if I remember. I only use Strava to track mileage* and I’m sure I don’t check my phone for messages all the time.**

Though, saying that, I often ride with headphones on solo rides and I love to take photos on rides. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so easy.

*Yeah, right…
**Also yeah, right…

To join me on this digital detox, I enlisted James Vincent and Mark Alker of this parish. They, I figured, also shared that uneasy ‘I can quit any time I want, I just don’t want to’ daily dependence on phones, apps and checking emails ‘just in case…’.

The potential benefits

Ryan’s free course sets out the many ways in which we might be, knowingly or not, addicted to that constant digital feedback. Some are obvious, like checking your email and texts at every hilltop stop, but some are more subtle: even if you only have Strava running in the background, do you – or would you – ride differently knowing that there are timed segments on your ride? How quickly after you’ve finished your ride do you rush to upload your data to see how you compared with your friends or with last time?

As a photographer too, I wondered how many times I’ve whipped out the camera phone to capture a setting sun or a perfectly framed singletrack darting through the trees without stopping to take the scene in with my eyes. In fact, how often did I stop on a ride to just take in the scene, smell the air and feel the breeze in the trees?

Some of the benefits that Ryan promises include:

“Flow Without Distraction: Experience riding in its rawest form. Feel the wind, hear the tyres on the trail, and let yourself sink into the natural rhythm of your ride.

“Deeper Connection: With no screens to check, you’ll find yourself more in tune with your body, bike, and nature.

“Free Riding in its truest form: Break free from digital pressures and ride for the love of it, not for the metrics.”

What’s not to like, right?

Looking in at yourself looking down at a screen…

There are three, actually four, steps on the course. The first step involves riding as normal but making a conscious effort to observe how often you interact with your technology on a ride. Are you someone who has to check texts, Instagram and email at every gate-stop chat? Can the ride even begin until you’ve started Strava? Do you need to shoot phone photos whenever the light is ‘going off’? Or are you obsessed with your Garmin power meter averages – this stage of the challenge is to make sure you are aware of how much you subconsciously interact with these things every day.

Our experience: Chipps

I did a solo ride, just the usual iPhone and GPS with me, Strava running as usual too. I kept tabs on how often I looked down at the GPS, even though I knew where I was going and I wasn’t out to set any speed records. Turns out I look at it quite a lot. I congratulated myself as I ignored a few bleeps and bloops from the phone in my pocket and even stopped to collect fresh chestnuts from the forest floor. And then I checked my phone to see if those messages were important. They weren’t.

However, in a beautiful self-parody, even though I was on a trail I ride weekly, I saw on the corner of the map screen another trail that my pal Doug had told me he’d de-brambled. As I’d only ridden it once before, I wasn’t sure where it came out, so I found myself in the ridiculous situation of having to hotspot my Hammerhead to my phone so that I could download the GPX file from Doug’s Strava, and upload it to the head unit just for it to tell me ‘Yes, it comes out 200m further down the hill…’.

Whatever happened to just getting lost and playing around in the woods, eh? Suitably chastened, I returned home determined to make the most of the first digital-free ride.

Our experience: James

I took some kids out for their first proper Lake District ride, so I was on my phone a lot. Mostly to keep them informed of where we were, checking the weather to see if we’d get an inversion and to take photos/videos of them.

Our experience: Mark

This ride made me realise that I bought my Mons Royale riding pants specifically for their phone pocket. Every stop on the ride, which was with Vic, my wife, I reached for my phone to check for emails. Pretty instinctual and most of the time there was nothing new to look at. Just the same distracting list as the last time I looked, about ten minutes back.

I used my watch to record the workout – just for some archival reason or whatever. Like if I die there will be a record of what I did or something. I rarely ever go over these records or analyse them properly and yet I still feel the need to set the workout going before every ride and I get annoyed if I forget and start it part-way through, like something isn’t complete.

Ride One – ‘Essence’… Time to put the tech away

Focus on the act of riding itself rather than accomplishing something. Embrace each pedal stroke, each breath, and each moment the trail offers.

Chipps:

Ready to unplug, I set out on a fun loop with my wife and a visiting friend. We did a good amount of ‘Hey, let’s go up there, just because…’ and made a point of enjoying the ride. We even went to the ruined castle we’ve ridden past several times, always in a rush to get on. So, from that point of view, it felt liberating.

This was a halfway house kind of a ride. I turned off the phone but kept it in my bag as I was meeting someone later. Once I’d finished the ride, close to where we were meeting for lunch, I turned the phone back on. The results: one missed call from my friend telling me the café//ACCENT// where we were going to meet was closed and suggesting somewhere else five miles away, plus six missed calls from two different couriers… Not the unplugged experience I was expecting.

James:

Starting Strava before a ride has become second nature for me. It felt odd just putting my phone in my bag and setting off. Bonfire night, so lots of fireworks going off. Previously I’d have been snapping pics with my phone, only to delete most of them later. As it was, I just enjoyed the moment and watched.

Felt like I rode really well (until I crashed), and I’m mildly annoyed that I didn’t have a record of it on Strava. Felt a little bit lost when I got home as I had no pictures to look back on or Strava track to compare – turns out that riding with digital stuff can prolong the ride experience after the ride is finished.

Mark:

Terrifying! If I wasn’t constantly tapping my empty phone pocket on my pants every time I stopped, it was to check the time on the watch I didn’t have. I rode cautiously, pretty sure that every loose bit of gravel was going to have me off and I’d be found dead in the ditch after a week. My ride was never more than a couple of miles from the centre of Burnley on well-used tracks. When I got home I checked my phone before I washed the bike and before I removed any crap-covered clothes. Still no important emails.

Ride Two – Connection

Stepping away from digital check-ins to tune into your own physical sensations and mental transitions can be incredibly grounding. On a strenuous climb, become attuned to your body’s strength and resilience, even if your mind is fighting it!

Chipps:

Among other things I was supposed to be noticing on this ride was a greater sense of everything around me, and of my working body and bike. This time I left my phone at home, kept the GPS in a drawer, and set out to ride a loop that I love, but which needed a bit of trail clearing doing now after a summer of foliage ingress. I figured that if I wasn’t in a hurry and wasn’t tracking myself on Strava, stopping to trim a few bushes would be an ideal distraction from checking my phone. I was happy to take a few shortcuts from the normal loop as I knew that it wasn’t being tracked, so who cared about the mileage? I made a point of listening to my body on the scrabbly climbs, trying to pick the smoothest line, rather than the quick and dirty ones. I even stopped a couple of times on the climb with the secateurs to trim some head-height brambles away.

However, my ride turned out to take longer than I thought, with me finishing in darkness and I began to question the wisdom of chopping up trees, solo, on a seldom-used path, in the twilight, with no phone. My wife was not best pleased when I finally arrived home again, as we usually use Strava’s (subscription) location tracking feature to make sure someone’s not upside down in a hedge somewhere.

James:

Failed. Was meeting a friend mid-ride and he kept messaging to find out where I was. Had a work meeting immediately after the ride so was limited by time too. Couldn’t stop thinking about my phone. Was an incredible afternoon too – the light was amazing and when a friend pulled out his phone to take a photo I wanted to join in but felt guilty for even thinking about it. Riding was pretty full-on though, so when I was actually riding I had no problem concentrating.

Mark:

Decided to properly control my anxiety by taking food that I planned to sit and eat in a nice spot. Needed to focus a lot on being rational about my fear of coming off on trails I know like the back of my hand. Not as scary and the stop for food was pretty nice as there was nothing to do other than look at the landscape and realise I was actually in it. Still kept patting my empty phone pocket several times on the ride.

Ride Three – going with the Flow

While getting into the elusive ‘flow state’ is not the goal, going with the flow is

Chipps:

With the digital detox in full effect, the third ride in the series is all about feeling the flow. Not necessarily entering the elusive ‘flow state’ (see my editorial in issue 145 for more on this) but in just being ‘in the moment’ and letting everything flow. This seemed achievable. I went on a favourite loop of the trails with my pal, Régis//ACCENT//. Looking back, though, I can’t remember exactly when it was, or where we went, or how far it was, as I didn’t have my phone with me, so no Strava and no photos… but I do know that we had a great ride, we chatted and we (probably) rode like gods. In fact, I showed him a trail he’d never done, so the pressure (and pay-off) was great.

James:

Riding without Strava was OK, but I do like it as a record of where I’ve been. Was another glorious night ride – crystal clear. Desperately wanted to take a photo but rather than be in the moment, I was just annoyed because I couldn’t. Later on, when another photo op presented itself, I just gave in. It’s my life and I can do what I want!

Mark:

Kind of a compromise ride. Wore the watch for the recording of the workout I never analyse – at least I could tell the time. Didn’t take the phone. Better this time. More present on the riding and the landscape and less anxiety. Managed to ride sections at normal pace and enjoy them. Still aware of the heightened danger of riding alone with no phone – all rides were solo apart from the first ride.

Can’t quit, won’t quit?

Now, having welcomed my phone back on rides, I can look back on this brief dabble with a tech-free riding experience and I reckon that it has definitely been worth the experiment.

I found it massively hard to leave my phone behind for rides, perhaps a little less so the GPS, but I still missed its reassuring presence. I can justify, to myself at least, that I need a phone, because I often ride alone, on remote, or rarely visited trails. Having a means of communication, and of Strava tracking, eases my worries and those of my wife. In addition, I have always loved taking photos and will usually take at least a half-dozen on my phone every ride.

I know that nearly every Strava user says ‘Oh, I only use it to track mileage’ and I’ll stick to that lie too, knowing that I also want to keep tabs on whether I’m getting slowly slower, or if I’m finding a way to speed up the climbs and descents I do often.

Without headphones on solo rides, I found that I listened more – to the crunch of tyres, to the wind, the birdsong… and I seemed happy enough to hum whatever tune was on the radio that morning and I’d still be humming it at the end of the ride, my brain obviously too busy with other things to notice.

Trying this digital detox has made me more aware of how often I reach for my phone and how addicting that need to be connected can be. This is the point of the course – not necessarily to stop you using tech, but to make you more aware of how integral it is to your life. For me, I’m going to keep carrying a phone, tracking my rides and taking photos. What I will do more of, though, is taking more time to appreciate that hilltop view, and to take time to stop and look around and see how everyone in the group is getting on, and view each ride as the social event it is, taking place in the wonderful countryside (regardless of the weather), rather than a journey from A and back to A again.

Something we three all agreed we’d do now, is to consciously stash the phone in a bag before a ride. I’ll choose when I pull it out to snap a photo, look around more on rides and take my time after finishing each ride to decompress and relive the highlights in my mind before I look to my permanent portal digital machine to tell me how great I was. And, above all, I’ll try to spend less time when //ITS//not//ITS// riding, mindlessly scrolling a hundred dumb five-second videos every time I pick up my phone. A phone that I’ll try to pick up less often.

Looking for more?

For riders looking to further that connection between rider, trail, nature and self, check out Ryan Leech’s Transcend MTB course at transcendmtb.com, where you’ll find his free digital reset course, as well as details of his Pure Flow course if you really want to dive deep. If that all sounds a bit too ‘woo’ for you, then his other website – hub.rlc-mtb.com – has all of the bike skills tutorials you’ll probably ever need.

www.transcendmtb.com/c/digital-free-ride-reset

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Singletrack Merch