RobbieTunes

I hope to roll it in 2019, using 2018 to get used to the bike and repeated 100-mile days....

Is there a thread on this subforum or one with links? Thanks.

fietsbob

ACA trans america route starts on the Oregon Coast, goes over the Cascades McKenzie pass, and ends in Yorktown VA..

1st weekend in June a big bunch of racing 'tourists' start , doing that route in as short a time as they can..
most from the western end, some from the eastern end.



you may find archived threads on that topic..

pdlamb

It might be worth looking at the routes Adventure Cycling has mapped out:
https://www.adventurecycling.org/rou...e-network-map/


As a beginner, you may also benefit from looking at some of their introductory touring articles:
https://www.adventurecycling.org/res...to-department/

fietsbob

think instead about time in the saddle enjoying the riding and nature, maybe 100 Km, not miles..

BlarneyHammer

You could do worse than ACA's Trans-Am route. As an alternative, start in San Francisco, do the Western Express, and hop on the Trans-Am in/around Pueblo, CO.

And maybe take a detour in Missouri to do the Katy Trail.

spinnaker

If you are a newbie, you are grossly mistaken if you think you are going to be able to do repeated 100 mile days.

And you better get several shorter trips under your before you tackle something like a transAm tour.

staehpj1

Yes, most people who I met on my coast to coast trips who expected to average 100 mile days generally actually managed a lot less. The ones that come to mind first were very athletic and managed 80 mile days. I also do recall one guy who planned to and actually was averaging 100 mile days.

It depends on both the route and the rider. For example the ST is way more conducive to long daily averages than the TA or NT. As far as the rider... It has a lot less to do with touring experience than fitness and commitment.

Not a bad idea, but also not a requirement especially if you have experience with backpacking or other lightly loaded travel. I know that we did the TA as a first tour and did not regret it. It helped that the three of us all had plenty of backpacking and other outdoorsy experience. I mat others doing the TA or ST as a first tour and doing fine.

One thing about a long tour is that you can make changes as you go. You can send stuff home, you can buy stuff or have stuff sent from home. You can change your daily mileage.

FWIW on the TA we averaged 60 miles per day including rest days in the average.

BTW, I advise a couple thing that may help...

1. Allow more time than you need and take as long as it takes.
2. Start with fairly easy days in the beginning and add mileage as you go.
3. I don't like to take rest days unless it is to do something fun and figure if I NEED a rest day I went too long or hard the day before. Also I find an easy day with at least some riding is better for recovery than not riding. So I prefer to do short or half days where others might do rest days. Just me, but I find that works best.

indyfabz

The first day of my first ever tour (entire Northern Tier and then down the east coast to Philly thence on to the Jersey shore) was the second time I had ever ridden a loaded touring bike. That afternoon marked the second time I erected my tent. That night marked the first time I ever camped.

pdlamb

This is probably a good idea, but (as Pete and indy noted) not required. The first time my daughter or I put four panniers on a bike was the day we started in Yorktown.


We made it and had a blast!

alan s 

You will learn a lot by doing a few short trips before setting out across the US. Usually the first thing newbies learn is how much unnecessary stuff they are carrying.

texaspandj

Getting used to bike and riding 100 mile days sounds like a good training strategy to me. It certainly doesn't mean he intends to ride 100 mile days on the cross country ride. It' classic over distance training routine. One that RT is all too familiar with, Going back to his high level national class running days. Classic RT.

bikenh

First of all, you don't have to follow established routes to ride across the country. Most people do, but guys who want a true sense of adventure will create their own route and go ride it. I have never had a route or a destination planned ahead of time. I have just left home with a destination for a day or two away and rode there and started the planning process over again, repeatedly until I got the ride finished and I was back home. Did that for 8500 miles back in 2015 and saw every state east of the Rockies, including 20 state capital buildings.

Before my first trip I was just like you, wanting to get used to riding 100 mile days back to back to back. I had always heard of doing 100 mile days repeatedly while on tour. I also knew if I did that and left at the right time of the year I could get to my destination high and dry without having to deal with any storm fronts coming through. I've since come to learn to not even worry about it and just go ride. That's what makes to real fun trips. When you know what's around the next corner it takes the fun out it. Put the fun back in and just go ride. You only have to really plan 1-2 days ahead of time at the most to make sure you are going to have services available along the route you are going to follow. If you start trying to plan a long trip a year or two ahead of time you can easily run into one major problem that can force you change your plans unexpectedly...road construction. By planning day by day you can tell by using any decent mapping service what roads are open and what roads are closed by how they allow you route from point A to point B. If it won't let you take the shortest route it will either be because of being off limits to bikes or the whole road is closed due to construction.

One little thought that will help you understand the differences you can easily run into. Back in 2012 before my first trip I had the lovely month of July. Had a nice challenge, thanks to RideWithGPS.com. Wanted to see if I could ride the distance of the Tour de France while thetour was going on. It was competition they had that year. I knew I wasn't going to be around Wednesday(last week) through the end of the tour. I knew I had to get my miles in before than. That was one of the longer distance TdFs(2150-2200 miles that year). I knew it meant I had to ride and pretty much be riding 100+ miles per day to accomplish the goal. I was also hoping to ride 2000 miles for the 3 consecutive month and hit 1500 miles for the 12 consecutive and finish off my 52 consecutive weeks of doing a century a week. Everything was reinforcing everything else. If I accomplished one goal that one ride was helping all the other goals out as well. It came down to the last three days of the challenge, at least for me. I still needed to average 160+ miles a day to reach the TdF mileage goal and all others as well. Not living in flat country meant I needed to watch just where I rode to try to be able to keep myself going, or so I thought. Day one I rode 159 miles, day 2 was around 168, and day 3 I had 164 or 165 miles, just enough to get me the distance in,in 18 days. The only trouble I had was at the time I wasn't/hadn't since back in the 1990s been wearing any cycling gloves. I was glad I was going to have the next two weeks off the bike. The thoughts of even trying to hold onto handlebars again was one of the craziest thoughts I ever come up with. My hands hurt like hell.

Two weeks later I got back up to New England and rode on home from where I had left my bike when I drove a friend of mine's down to Texas and picked him and a couple of other guys up at the airport. After another week or so getting things done around home I left for the first bike trip. I knew I could easily ride 160 miles a day, even though I had an hour of daylight each day I knew I could easily pull off that kind of mileage...OOPS!! One small minor difference. I had been doing all the previous riding, with the exception of the first half of the day(the day down to my friends house) and then again to get back home with an unloaded bike. The load on the bike, around 40 pounds the first three years, definitely changed things quite big time. I was down to being able to hardly ride 120-125 miles a day until I got of hill country in western NY and then I had a nice 170 mile day.

Just because you can ride 100 miles unloaded doesn't mean you can ride 100 miles fully loaded.

Yeah on the trip in 2015 I averaged 125 miles a day while on the open road so you can easily ride big miles each day and still enjoy yourself, especially if you find yourself in areas where their isn't much else to do but get other the area and into someplace more appealing. Knowing you can ride the big miles gives you the flexibility of riding the high miles to get yourself out of the less desirable locations you will be bound to ride yourself into, whether on an ACA route or a route you create yourself. Give yourself that flexibility. You never know when it could go as far as even saving your life because you can get yourself out of a dangerous situation.

spinnaker

Exactly my point. A lot better to makes mistakes on a short trip before committing to a long one.

Tourist in MSN

A friend of mine did three of ACA cross country routes, two of those rides were with ACA groups. (I have done none.)

You probably can find some trip logs on Crazy Guy on a Bike website, try there.
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com

Alxbr

Probably he read 100 somewhere and think that was miles, but was kms.

100 kms is a pretty much common standard for a touring average day.

Jseis 

6 of us rode Seattle to NY mostly in Canada. We started pretty easy, 30-50 miles a day and spent that time in the BC coast range and Canadian Rockies. Once we hit the Great Plains we were over 60 and by Minnesota we were pushing 90-100+. That required all day cycling. Many times we finished at sunset. If you really want to see the country ride 60 miles a day. We ended covering 4000 miles in about 53 days out of 60 overall. And we picked our own route as we weren’t interested in running across the bike America crowd in ‘76.

Abu Mahendra

...and there and then, you were hooked for life.

staehpj1

Those short tours as preparation does have some advantages and may be a good thing for many tourists, but they are not absolutely necessary and do have some downsides. Two in particular come to mind.

First, they really do not give you much of an approximation of what a long tour will be like. A short tour is a way different experience and it is possible that you may not find them to be all that much fun. I know that really short tours don't have much appeal for me. If I am not going more than a couple days I'd rather just day ride with an unladen bike. I suspect that if I had started with an overnight tour or two I might have concluded that I didn't really like touring all that much.

Second, I am not sure most folks will learn not to carry all that extra stuff while on a short tour. It is as likely that they will get more ingrained in their practices. They will just tough it out and by the time they go on a long tour the practices will be set. Worse yet they will probably justify carrying even more if they head out on a multi month tour. Unlike a short tour, a long one allows more option to send stuff home or make other adjustments.

On long tours it is common for folks to make adjustments in their gear by sending stuff home usually after a couple weeks on the road and again possibly a couple more times during the tour. I think that is less likely to happen if someone goes out for a bunch of overnight or week end tours.

Everyone is different though, so my comments may or may not really apply to everyone, but I think that they do apply to a significant number of folks.