Women’s cycling rides: Collective pathways to optimal experience

Abstract

Women’s cycling rides are leisure events where individual and group elements may jointly contribute to optimal experience. This study was aimed at building knowledge about the narratives underlying optimal experience of these collective (noncompetitive) events. Twenty-nine women who participated in group cycling rides and challenges in Spain and in Colombia were interviewed. Csíkszentmihályi’s seminal work on shared flow and Durkheim’s collective gatherings guided the analysis in the coding stages. By considering participation in these events from a time-perspective, we examined previous circumstances, observed the evolution of social identification with the group from a relational perspective, and explored outcomes from a well-being standpoint. Central to the case that the experience is optimal is the interconnection of individual and shared flow, as well as emotional synchrony, social categorization, and empowerment. Group commitment, sorority, prosociality, and eudaimonic well-being and identity are revealed post-event.

Keywords:

• Collective effervescence
• cycling rides
• optimal experience
• shared flow
• women’s leisure

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Erkuden Almagro (the organizer of the 50K Challenge of Bizikume), to Paqui González (one of the organizers of 24 hours Challenge of Woman Bike Evolution), and to Ángela S. Restrepo (Corporación Social Curvas en Bici) for their valuable assistance in contacting the participants of this study. The authors would also like to express gratitude to the special issue editors for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Ethical standards

The procedures of this study have been approved by the institutional research committee (CEISH) of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU (protocol code M10_2021_085, 25 March 2021) and have been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Data availability statement

The data presented in this study are not available on request due to ethical consent restrictions.

Notes

1 The voice-note of the woman with diverse auditory functionality lasted three minutes and eighteen seconds.

2 Original Spanish language quotes and their English translations are available upon request.

3 In this regard, Csíkszentmihályi mentioned some transforming experiences leading to goal-meaning, for instance: “as a counselor to other paraplegics, […] Franco sees his main challenge now as that of helping other victims avoid despair […]. He says the most important goal in his life is to ‘feel that I can be of use to others, help recent victims accept their situation’.” (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990:194).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from Basque Government Research Groups (‘Culture, Cognition, and Emotion’ Consolidated Group; IT1598-22), by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-115738GB-I00, funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/) and by a pre-doctoral grant from the Education Department of the Basque Government (PRE_2022_2_0263).