May 15 is International Day of Families. Established by the UN in 1993, this is the day to celebrate and raise awareness of the importance and value of family and to promote awareness of issues relating to families. Even though families may be complex and diverse, we are lucky to have these important people in our lives who we can count on and shower with love.
What better way to celebrate than a playlist dedicated to your family and loved ones? There are so many songs that celebrate mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and children. To help you create your family-themed ride, we’ve got a bucket playlist of over 220 songs for you to choose from.
Even better, we’ll save you time with a challenging and fun profile already created for you called “It’s A Family Affair” that you can find below. ICA contributor Fern Stancer taught this ride in February at her club in Toronto. Canada celebrates its own family day on the third Monday in February—so if you’re in Canada, you can pull this out twice a year.
This profile lets you take a moment out of your day to honor and appreciate your family. It has a combination of climbs and flat roads to challenge your riders while also having fun. It starts out with a warm-up and three climbing opportunities to take your riders to above threshold with enough recovery to do it again. There is one song for higher-cadence speed intervals and then two more climbing options. Finish with a high-intensity fast flat that pushes you to the end.
While your riders are breathing hard and working outside their comfort zones, encourage them to think of all the things about their family that they are grateful for.
Of course, you don’t even need a special day to celebrate families—you can do it any time of the year. Here’s another idea: if you have been teaching the same group for many years and you all have a special bond, why not create a special day just to celebrate them—honor them as your cycling family with this profile!
You can switch out songs from the bucket playlist below if you want. And if you need a super-short track between segments to bring a smile to your riders’ faces? Throw in this silly little ditty—it’s only 50 seconds long!
As usual, if you have a great song or two that we might be missing in our bucket playlist, let us know in the comments!