The idea that short rides are pointless is a silly cycling myth

Due the busy life and family commitments I find that most of my rides are commutes currently only 8km which I can do on a good day with favourable traffic lights in 13min, I find that even when I push it my heart does not get out of zone 2 (normally takes at least 10km). So not conventional training but I certainly feel the benefit mentally and physically.

Due to time constraints and trying to fit 2x bike 2x run 2x swim 2x gym sessions in a week between jobs my Tuesday ride is a 30 ish minutes rip up a couple of hills and a bomb home. Sunday is the ride ride. I can say for a fact that 30 minutes used to be 40 and my average went from 15-6 mph to 19+.
The psychological benefit alone is massive and it definitely benefits my fitness

The myth is that far too many people think cycling is only done by those clad in lycra, riding the latest carbon fibre missile, a myth perpetuated by many of the websites in the back pocket of the marketeers with something to sell.

The truth is that sports cycling and all the training required to see an ever decreasing return in speed/distance cycled is only one small facet of of the cycling community.

Any journey on a bike should be lauded in itself, regardless of the distance travelled. The alternative is most likely to entail the burning of fossil fuels whether using a car or public transport, even electic vehicles rely upon the national grid that is far from green.

Cycling in all it's forms is a fantastic way to travel, but pumping out these training plans and anecdotal stories of what is really needed to be a cyclist does more harm than good. The reality to all these myths is that you need a bike, a pair of legs, some might need hands instead and then you are set.

Everything else is just marketing bullshit preaching to different sectors to sell what seems to be increasingly overpriced tat.

Riding a bike should be a simple joy. We should be careful that we don't make it look too complicated if we want to encourage new cyclists to take to two wheels.

Imagine if all the money wasted on advertising the must buy, latest gadget was actually spent on building Dutch style infrastructure, therefore reducing the number of vehicles on the roads.

Surely that is what we should be aiming for, rather than buying the latest trinket that will save us a watt or two, or make us quicker by a few seconds.

Any ride is a good ride no matter how long or far. I quite like rides between 1 and 2 hours with the occaisional longer one

I thought that to improve fitness you need to do more than you have done before, so long rides need to be up there with your longest or at least in a series of long rides. Hard rides need to be harder faster. If you can go faster and further then you haven't been trying. I have heard coaches say that average riders do too much in the middle zones. So if you are limited for time go hard and fast. Don't forget recovery either and they can be short rides too.

As a man with 3 kids to get time to do longer than an hour is great. A 2 hour ride is almost a dream...

My average ride is about 8.5 miles, and about 40 minutes. Of course this is highly skewed by most of my rides being my daily work commute, nine miles each way. I don't do anything like structured training, but I am very slowly getting fitter.

I mostly commute in zones 2/3, occasionally [edit] attacking a hill, which is a 1-minute effort as the hills around me are not very big. If my legs are feeling the effects of recent rides, I'll sometimes try to stay in zone 1 for recovery, which adds maybe 5-10 minutes to my commute.

Agree with much in the article but think it would have been better framed as a positive exhortation to embrace the benefits of shorter rides rather than as a negative response to a manufactured controversy. Besides, it fails to consider one of the main (and quite justifiable) reasons I suspect people prefer longer rides--cycling is pretty great, and once you start you just want to keep going.

There' a lot of nonsense out there. 

Agree with the sentiment of this article, that there are 'other benefits' to any ride alongside training purposes.

However as I understand it (and I'm happy to be shown the error of my ways) for training purposes, you're mostly cutting up different ways to do either a High intensity interval training (HIIT), a Strength Workout or an Aerobic Activity..... and each of those do have 'efficient' ways to train which probably are the basis of a lot of the myths which fly about. I see a lot of people doing inefficient training for trainings sake.

On the flip side to that, and more in the keeping of the article, I ride my bike how I like to ride my bike and that's the important thing for me. For me riding a bike keeps my head on straight and my body ticking over.

Err, who said short rides are pointless?

(rhetorical question, btw)