Cycling

A bike lane in Amsterdam. Bike lanes are dedicated for cyclists and provide shelter from vehicle traffic.
Police cyclists in London.
A woman cycling in Sri Lanka.
A parking lot for bicycles in Niigata, Japan.
Bicycle stands outside the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Many students at the university opt to travel by bicycle.
The safe physically separated Fietspad in the Netherlands, keeping cyclists away from traffic as seen in Utrecht.
A bicycle loaded with tender coconuts for sale in Karnataka, India.
In the Netherlands, bicycles are freely available for use in the Hoge Veluwe National Park.
Tour de Fat group ride in Portland, Oregon.
San Jose Bike Party in San Jose, California (July 2019).
Bicycle racing in 1909.
A peloton of professional bicycle racers on the Golden Gate Bridge.
OP Grand Prix, a one-hour cycling competition in Porvoo, Finland, on June 11, 2005.
San Francisco Critical Mass, April 29, 2005.
Headquarters of the Union Cycliste Internationale in Switzerland.
Heavily equipped London cyclist: specialist cycle clothing, pollution mask, dark glasses and helmet.
Bike at Prins Hendrikkade, Amsterdam.
Virgin Mary venerated as the holy protector of bicyclists on the roads of the mountainous Basque Country.
Bicyclist pedals uphill at the Taroko Gorge in Taiwan.
Bicycles in Helsinki (Finland).

Use of bicycles for transport, recreation, exercise or sport.

- Cycling

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Exercise

Any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness.

Running in water (aquarunning)
Weight training
An aerobics exercise instructor instructs her class to keep up the pace in the United States.
Summary of long-term adaptations to regular aerobic and anaerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise can cause several central cardiovascular adaptations, including an increase in stroke volume (SV) and maximal aerobic capacity (VO2 max), as well as a decrease in resting heart rate (RHR). Long-term adaptations to resistance training, the most common form of anaerobic exercise, include muscular hypertrophy, an increase in the physiological cross-sectional area (PCSA) of muscle(s), and an increase in neural drive, both of which lead to increased muscular strength. Neural adaptations begin more quickly and plateau prior to the hypertrophic response.
Roper's gymnasium, Philadelphia, USA, circa 1831.
Running helps in achieving physical fitness.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/running-and-jogging-health-benefits#goal-setting-for-running-and-jogging |title= Running and jogging - health benefits}}</ref>
Skateboarding is good for cardiovascular health<ref>{{cite web |title=5 Reasons Why Skateboarding Is Good Exercise |url=https://longboardingnation.com/reasons-skateboarding-good-exercise/ |website=Longboarding Nation |access-date=6 July 2021 |date=25 January 2019}}</ref>{{Better source needed|date=January 2022}}
Swimming as an exercise tones muscles and builds strength.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/swimming-health-benefits#health-benefits-of-swimming |title= Swimming - health benefits }}</ref>
Athletics (ex. pole vault) as a form of exercise
Football as an exercise

Aerobic exercise is any physical activity that uses large muscle groups and causes the body to use more oxygen than it would while resting. The goal of aerobic exercise is to increase cardiovascular endurance. Examples of aerobic exercise include running, cycling, swimming, brisk walking, skipping rope, rowing, hiking, dancing, playing tennis, continuous training, and long distance running.

Sport

Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators.

Sport in childhood. Association football, shown above, is a team sport which also provides opportunities to nurture physical fitness and social interaction skills.
The International Olympic Committee recognises some board games as sports including chess.
Show jumping, an equestrian sport
100m race record holder Usain Bolt (in yellow, right) and other runners, Moscow, 2013.
Roman bronze reduction of Myron's Discobolos, 2nd century AD.
Motorised sports have appeared since the advent of the modern age.
Swimmers perform squats as warm-up exercise prior to entering the pool in a U.S. military base, 2011
International level female athletes at ISTAF Berlin, 2006
A runner gives a friendly tap on the shoulder to a wheelchair racer during the Marathon International de Paris (Paris Marathon) in 2014.
Spectators at the 1906 unofficial Olympic Games
Women's volleyball team of a U.S. university.
These lights at the Melbourne Cricket Ground indicate the decision the third umpire makes following a review.
The foot race was one of the events dedicated to Zeus. Panathenaic amphora, Kleophrades painter, circa 500 BC, Louvre museum.

The closest to an international agreement on a definition is provided by SportAccord, which is the association for all the largest international sports federations (including association football, athletics, cycling, tennis, equestrian sports, and more), and is therefore the de facto representative of international sport.

Recreation

Activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time.

Surfing, a form of recreation
Pieter Bruegel Children's Games (1560)
Mennonite woman dressmaking (1942)
Ancient Egyptian gaming board inscribed for Amenhotep III with separate sliding drawer, from 1390 to 1353 BC, made of glazed faience, dimensions: 5.5 × 7.7 × 21 cm, in the Brooklyn Museum (New York City)
A park in New York City where people sunbathe and relax.
Depiction of aurochs, horses and deer in Lascaux
University of Auckland Recreation Centre

Other traditional examples of outdoor recreational activities include hiking, camping, mountaineering, cycling, canoeing, caving, kayaking, rafting, rock climbing, running, sailing, skiing, sky diving and surfing.

Bicycle pedal

Part of a bicycle that the rider pushes with their foot to propel the vehicle.

Simple platform bicycle pedal
Wellgo DMR V8 Copy pedal
Bicycle pedal, quill road type, with toe clip and toe strap (1970s)
Mikashima track pedal
Shimano SPD system
LOOK road pedals
Eggbeater pedal with cleat from Crankbrothers, designed for mountain bikes
SPD Dual Choice with shoe
Xpedo M-FORCE 4 TI pedals with six-degree float
Davtus magnet pedal
Folding pedal on a Brompton bicycle
Folding pedal on a standard bicycle, unfolded...
...and folded

It provides the connection between the cyclist's foot or shoe and the crank allowing the leg to turn the bottom bracket spindle and propel the bicycle's wheels.

League of American Bicyclists

A memorial in Newport's Touro Park commemorates the centennial of the League's founding
Bicyclists of the League of American Wheelmen pose before the second annual St. Louis County Bicycle Tour, 1892
League of American Wheelman - Horse bibs - Good Roads, 1897

The League of American Bicyclists (LAB), officially the League of American Wheelmen, is a membership organization that promotes cycling for fun, fitness and transportation through advocacy and education.

Bicycle helmet

Three styles of bicycle helmets: Standard, Full-Face, and Multi-Sport.
A typical bicycle helmet
Nat Butler 1910
Radhelm 1940er
Martin Wierstra (NED) 1959
Bernhard Eckstein 1960
"Hairnet" helmet
A Giro Atmos helmet, showing seamless in-mould micro shell construction.
Joop Zoetemelk in 1979
Example of shock detector in bicycle helmet to signal when a crash has occurred
Types of modern bicycle helmet design technologies. Energy absorbing Bontrager Wavecell (left) and Smith Koroyd (center); MIPS (right)
Census 2011 cycle work graph

A bicycle helmet is a type of helmet designed to attenuate impacts to the head of a cyclist in falls while minimizing side effects such as interference with peripheral vision.

Drafting (aerodynamics)

Aerodynamic technique where two vehicles or other moving objects are caused to align in a close group, reducing the overall effect of drag due to exploiting the lead object's slipstream.

A paceline of drafting cyclists
Belgian tourniquet (Belgischer Kreisel)
A line of cars at Talladega Superspeedway utilizing the slipstream of leader Kyle Busch.
Canada geese flying in a V formation

In cycling, any time one bicyclist is riding behind another, energy is conserved, especially at higher speeds.

Bicycle touring

Expedition type bicycle touring Cordillera del Paine
Touring the countryside, 1887
Woman in bicycle clothes and buttoned on skirt that also can be used as raincoat
H. G. Wells in 1908 at the door of his house at Sandgate
Supported bicycle touring holidays, such as the nine-day Great Victorian Bike Ride in Australia, can attract thousands of riders
Heinz Stücke in Paris, 1999
Trio of cyclists with panniers on a tour in Slovenia.
A loaded touring bicycle, with drop bars, 700c wheels, racks panniers and bar bag.
Fully loaded touring Sinbent
Two-wheel trailer

Bicycle touring is the taking of self-contained cycling trips for pleasure, adventure or autonomy rather than sport, commuting or exercise.

Individual time trial

Bradley Wiggins at the 2012 Tour de France, riding a time trial bicycle with aerodynamic wheels and aero bars
Kristin Armstrong riding to win the gold medal at the time trial at the 2012 Summer Olympics
Greg LeMond holding low-profile 'bullhorn' handlebars, with tri-bars in between his arms, at the 1989 Tour de France.
Time trial bikes used by the team in 2015

An individual time trial (ITT) is a road bicycle race in which cyclists race alone against the clock (in French: contre la montre – literally "against the watch", in Italian: tappa a cronometro "stopwatch stage").

Modal share

Percentage of travelers using a particular type of transportation or number of trips using said type.

United Kingdom transport modal share from 1952 to 2014, Department for Transport

In recent years, many cities have set modal share targets for balanced and sustainable transport modes, particularly 30% of non-motorized (cycling and walking) and 30% of public transport.