What I Learned on the Bike Across America
06-02-04, 02:36 PM
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What I Learned on the Bike Across America
What does one learn when trying to ride across America at an average of 110 miles a day for 31 days (3500 miles)?
1. Eat Like a Pig
Eat as much as you can. Stop when you can’t swallow another bite. A 150 mile day at 15 mph can require 6,000 calories. To replace those calories, I had to eat 3 times what I eat on a normal day. I learned to eat whenever and whatever I could.
Eating this much food is not easy. Let’s say you’ve trained properly and you are eating all the right things. You pour nonfat milk on cereal, eat bagels, pasta, sautéed vegetables, lean meats, and so on. You’ve watched not only your quality but your quantity. That’s certainly what I did when I was training. It made me feel good and helped me trim away body fat. But during the ride is a whole different story. Not only does the quality of food suffer (entire states seem to be devoid of nonfat milk and vegetables) but the quantity of food that must be consumed is hard to fathom.
Take a typical day on the ride. Breakfast is several trips to the buffet table: 6 pancakes drenched in syrup, fruit, 2 servings of cold cereal, eggs, hash browns and sausages. You squirrel away a bagel for the road. Within two hours on the road, you eat your pocket food, the bagel or energy bar. At the first snack stop, 6 to 8 cookies hit the spot, downed by most of a bottle of water and then maybe some fruit. Lunch is a turkey sandwich, a bagel with honey and peanut butter and some salty chips. A bag of animal cookies goes in the pocket for down the road, to be washed down by a whole bottle of sport drink because dinner is 20 or 30 miles off. You arrive at the hotel and eat a handful or two of almonds so the protein will rebuild muscles but you’re already thinking of where to get a dinner. You could eat half a large pizza or get a sit-down meal. A restaurant with limitless salad bar is a joy to find. You tell the waitress to keep the bread coming. And which dessert is bigger? The Chocolate Delight or the apple cobbler with ice cream? A couple of pieces of Belgian chocolate are perfect back at the hotel while reading email before lights out. You arrive at breakfast the next day hungry. If it’s not a buffet, you get a normal eggs/bacon/toast/juice serving—the kind of breakfast that would normally make you skip lunch. But now you are watching the guy’s toast at the next table because if he’s not going to touch them…
Whoa! What a nutritional nightmare. You’re picturing that I will not fit in my bike shorts by the end of the ride. Not at all. My weight at the end of the ride was within 2 lbs of the weight I started with despite this seeming gluttony. Riders who watched what they ate, passed on the gooey dessert and the donuts ended up looking haggard, losing weight and complaining of tiredness. One rider lost 22 lbs but 5 to 10 lbs loss was typical.
What’s wrong with that? Weight loss is good, right? That is what we are trained to think and even fit and trim athletes seem to prescribe to this ideal. After all, you are just losing body fat, aren’t you? Now, I should check with a sports nutritionist before I go spouting off but just based upon my experience and reasoning, you can’t metabolize body fat fast enough to match the energy expenditure when cycling 15 to 20 mph. Once your body depletes its glycogen from the blood, it tries to produce glycogens from other sources. Your liver is a source for glycogen but you don’t want to go there. Waiting for fat to be converted to energy can’t help but slow you down. In fact, the point at which your blood has been exhausted of glycogen is what marathoners call “hitting the wall” and what long distance cyclists call “bonking.”
It wasn’t without a degree of shame that I overcame my inhibitions about eating lots of food and “bad” food at that. After all, eating a half pound Dunkin Donut apple fritter and a glazed chocolate donut is about as far from health food as you can get. Yet, my admittedly non-scientific results prove otherwise. The times I thought I was tired, I was only hungry. A sugar fix from donuts or cookies gave me quick energy, the carbs kicked in a little later and the fat was for longer term.
Could I eat like that forever—even if I was riding forever? No, I don’t think so. It was a diet that was high in processed food and very low in vegetables and roughage. That would have health consequences in the long term, I’m sure. I did supplement with multivitamins and calcium chews on the road, for what that’s worth.
2. Prepare on the Hills
In Marin County, where I live, if you can’t do hills, you can’t get out of your neighborhood. The Marin landscape is all hills. Every 50 mile loop you can create will have thousands of feet of climbing. Marin’s Mt. Tamalpais (2600 ft) is one of the tallest mountains along the California coast and I rode up it as often as I could. Riding a Marin mile gives you more exercise than miles in most other parts of the country. I had been worried about getting over the Rockies with their snowy peaks and elevations of over 10,000 feet. “Gotta get over the Rockies” became a mantra on my training rides (as well as motivation to lose all possible body fat). In retrospect, I was over-prepared. In the first place, the highest elevation on the trip was going over the Continental Divide (7,200 ft). Secondly, you start the mountain climbs a base that may be already 4,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level. (Why don’t people ever talk about that?) And lastly, all the roads I took up the mountains had lower grades than what I had gotten myself used to. I estimate 6-8 per cent grade while at home long stretches of 10 per cent are not uncommon. So while I wouldn’t say getting over the Rockies was a walk in the park, it was not the challenge I was expecting
3. Regulate with a Heart Rate Monitor
Bike racers will always train with a heart monitor (hrm) but rarely use them on road races. Therefore, I debated leaving mine at home. I’m SO glad I didn’t. My heart rate monitor (hrm) allowed me to regulate my intensity throughout the ride the same way it did during my training. I could determine my maximum sustainable heart rate in the morning and on a good day, I could stay within 5 beats of it the rest of the day. On hills, I might go above by 10-20 bpm but the higher intensity on hills is also something I can maintain. Using the hrm let me know when I was overdoing it, such as when I tried to latch on to a paceline that was going too fast. It also kept me from slacking on descents and flats with the wind on my back. On a few days where there was a mighty tailwind, I could easily do 20 mph but because of my hrm, I could fly at 24 to 26 mph.
4. Get Low and Narrow
I try to use every trick to cheat the wind. I position my handle bars as low almost as low as they will go which keeps my head low and my chest out of the wind. With headwinds, I ride with my hands close to the center of the bars and elbows tucked in reducing my frontal projected area even further. I can gain 1 to 1.5 miles per hour this way. I figure that is free speed.
5. Downtowns are Dying
The route I took across the country took me through countless small towns. The picturesque, thriving towns were few and far between. Much more common were towns with boarded up windows and stores with “Closed” signs. Sometimes, entire downtowns were deserted. I joked about them being neutron bomb test sites but it was sad to think so much of America could have been abandoned. The heartland of Norman Rockwell with pies cooling on the windowsills, swimming holes and country stores with pickle barrels has all but gone out of existence. Yes, there are more Wal-Mart's and strip malls but they don’t make up for all the stores and businesses gone under.
6. Carry One Additional Layer
The Weather Channel lies. Days that have not a drop of rain on the Doppler will have sudden flash thunderstorms. A day with a high of 90 degrees could have a mountain top that is forever in cold fog. I reserve one jersey pocket for one additional layer, either a wind vest or a rain jacket that will keep the weather from ruining my day.
7. Thick Heavy Tires
Forget light, expensive racing tires. When riding across the country, you’re better off with thick, cheap tires. And fill them all the way up to the maximum recommended pressures to avoid pinch flats. I got only 5 punctures. I used one pair of Specialized Armadillo tires for the whole ride. They certainly have my personal endorsement.
8. This Can be One Boring Country
I never thought I could fall asleep while riding my bike. I came close on this trip. Another cyclist told me he had fallen asleep and ran into a cornfield. Everyone thinks that this country has beautiful sights—and it does. There’s the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and lots of others. But in-between those points are long, straight featureless roads and a sameness of surroundings that can stretch for hours. Do you remember being bored out of your mind taking interstate rides in the family station wagon? It’s worse. It takes even longer on a bike and you can’t even make faces at cars behind you.
Now don’t get me wrong. I did find enough beauty to warrant almost a thousand photos. There were great mountains, flowers, rock formations and the like. I’ll remember the waves in the wheat fields and the treeless deserts. But there were whole days that didn’t warrant my camera to be turned on. One day’s wheat field looked like the next, and so on. The straight roads flat smooth roads through Arizona and New Mexico made me feel like I was pedaling without progress as if I was on a stationery bike against a big diorama.
9. Take Time to Dwell
In terms of personal journeys, this was an epic one. Though many days I was in a hurry to get through the ride and end up in the hotel, I knew I would regret not stopping enough times and enjoying the journey. Many historical sites were ignored. Dozens of curious locals were not talked to. Even a quaint bike museum was given short shrift. While the goal of this particular trip was to get across the USA in the minimum amount of days, I would advise others to take a few more days and dwell on the unique and interesting sites as well as meet people along the way.
10. Know When You’re Done
Unless you are a die-hard adventurer, riding your bike across the Unites States is a signature, memorable and life-defining trip. You don’t need to do it again, do it with a different route, go around the world, do it on a unicycle, etc. You are done. Remember, you just took a lot of time off: time off work, time away from your family and/or loved ones. That’s not including all the time you took to train for this, which is probably equal to the trip itself. Now that is a lot of debt you have incurred. If your job or family and loved ones don’t mind you being away for all this time, you have other problems to consider. But if you were missed, keep in mind that the only reason you could take a whole month off go away to do your own thing was because every body indulged you. To put it very bluntly, they catered to your selfish interest. You have to make it up. Coming back from this ride and telling people you’d now like to plan for Mt Everest is not going to make you very popular.
1. Eat Like a Pig
Eat as much as you can. Stop when you can’t swallow another bite. A 150 mile day at 15 mph can require 6,000 calories. To replace those calories, I had to eat 3 times what I eat on a normal day. I learned to eat whenever and whatever I could.
Eating this much food is not easy. Let’s say you’ve trained properly and you are eating all the right things. You pour nonfat milk on cereal, eat bagels, pasta, sautéed vegetables, lean meats, and so on. You’ve watched not only your quality but your quantity. That’s certainly what I did when I was training. It made me feel good and helped me trim away body fat. But during the ride is a whole different story. Not only does the quality of food suffer (entire states seem to be devoid of nonfat milk and vegetables) but the quantity of food that must be consumed is hard to fathom.
Take a typical day on the ride. Breakfast is several trips to the buffet table: 6 pancakes drenched in syrup, fruit, 2 servings of cold cereal, eggs, hash browns and sausages. You squirrel away a bagel for the road. Within two hours on the road, you eat your pocket food, the bagel or energy bar. At the first snack stop, 6 to 8 cookies hit the spot, downed by most of a bottle of water and then maybe some fruit. Lunch is a turkey sandwich, a bagel with honey and peanut butter and some salty chips. A bag of animal cookies goes in the pocket for down the road, to be washed down by a whole bottle of sport drink because dinner is 20 or 30 miles off. You arrive at the hotel and eat a handful or two of almonds so the protein will rebuild muscles but you’re already thinking of where to get a dinner. You could eat half a large pizza or get a sit-down meal. A restaurant with limitless salad bar is a joy to find. You tell the waitress to keep the bread coming. And which dessert is bigger? The Chocolate Delight or the apple cobbler with ice cream? A couple of pieces of Belgian chocolate are perfect back at the hotel while reading email before lights out. You arrive at breakfast the next day hungry. If it’s not a buffet, you get a normal eggs/bacon/toast/juice serving—the kind of breakfast that would normally make you skip lunch. But now you are watching the guy’s toast at the next table because if he’s not going to touch them…
Whoa! What a nutritional nightmare. You’re picturing that I will not fit in my bike shorts by the end of the ride. Not at all. My weight at the end of the ride was within 2 lbs of the weight I started with despite this seeming gluttony. Riders who watched what they ate, passed on the gooey dessert and the donuts ended up looking haggard, losing weight and complaining of tiredness. One rider lost 22 lbs but 5 to 10 lbs loss was typical.
What’s wrong with that? Weight loss is good, right? That is what we are trained to think and even fit and trim athletes seem to prescribe to this ideal. After all, you are just losing body fat, aren’t you? Now, I should check with a sports nutritionist before I go spouting off but just based upon my experience and reasoning, you can’t metabolize body fat fast enough to match the energy expenditure when cycling 15 to 20 mph. Once your body depletes its glycogen from the blood, it tries to produce glycogens from other sources. Your liver is a source for glycogen but you don’t want to go there. Waiting for fat to be converted to energy can’t help but slow you down. In fact, the point at which your blood has been exhausted of glycogen is what marathoners call “hitting the wall” and what long distance cyclists call “bonking.”
It wasn’t without a degree of shame that I overcame my inhibitions about eating lots of food and “bad” food at that. After all, eating a half pound Dunkin Donut apple fritter and a glazed chocolate donut is about as far from health food as you can get. Yet, my admittedly non-scientific results prove otherwise. The times I thought I was tired, I was only hungry. A sugar fix from donuts or cookies gave me quick energy, the carbs kicked in a little later and the fat was for longer term.
Could I eat like that forever—even if I was riding forever? No, I don’t think so. It was a diet that was high in processed food and very low in vegetables and roughage. That would have health consequences in the long term, I’m sure. I did supplement with multivitamins and calcium chews on the road, for what that’s worth.
2. Prepare on the Hills
In Marin County, where I live, if you can’t do hills, you can’t get out of your neighborhood. The Marin landscape is all hills. Every 50 mile loop you can create will have thousands of feet of climbing. Marin’s Mt. Tamalpais (2600 ft) is one of the tallest mountains along the California coast and I rode up it as often as I could. Riding a Marin mile gives you more exercise than miles in most other parts of the country. I had been worried about getting over the Rockies with their snowy peaks and elevations of over 10,000 feet. “Gotta get over the Rockies” became a mantra on my training rides (as well as motivation to lose all possible body fat). In retrospect, I was over-prepared. In the first place, the highest elevation on the trip was going over the Continental Divide (7,200 ft). Secondly, you start the mountain climbs a base that may be already 4,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level. (Why don’t people ever talk about that?) And lastly, all the roads I took up the mountains had lower grades than what I had gotten myself used to. I estimate 6-8 per cent grade while at home long stretches of 10 per cent are not uncommon. So while I wouldn’t say getting over the Rockies was a walk in the park, it was not the challenge I was expecting
3. Regulate with a Heart Rate Monitor
Bike racers will always train with a heart monitor (hrm) but rarely use them on road races. Therefore, I debated leaving mine at home. I’m SO glad I didn’t. My heart rate monitor (hrm) allowed me to regulate my intensity throughout the ride the same way it did during my training. I could determine my maximum sustainable heart rate in the morning and on a good day, I could stay within 5 beats of it the rest of the day. On hills, I might go above by 10-20 bpm but the higher intensity on hills is also something I can maintain. Using the hrm let me know when I was overdoing it, such as when I tried to latch on to a paceline that was going too fast. It also kept me from slacking on descents and flats with the wind on my back. On a few days where there was a mighty tailwind, I could easily do 20 mph but because of my hrm, I could fly at 24 to 26 mph.
4. Get Low and Narrow
I try to use every trick to cheat the wind. I position my handle bars as low almost as low as they will go which keeps my head low and my chest out of the wind. With headwinds, I ride with my hands close to the center of the bars and elbows tucked in reducing my frontal projected area even further. I can gain 1 to 1.5 miles per hour this way. I figure that is free speed.
5. Downtowns are Dying
The route I took across the country took me through countless small towns. The picturesque, thriving towns were few and far between. Much more common were towns with boarded up windows and stores with “Closed” signs. Sometimes, entire downtowns were deserted. I joked about them being neutron bomb test sites but it was sad to think so much of America could have been abandoned. The heartland of Norman Rockwell with pies cooling on the windowsills, swimming holes and country stores with pickle barrels has all but gone out of existence. Yes, there are more Wal-Mart's and strip malls but they don’t make up for all the stores and businesses gone under.
6. Carry One Additional Layer
The Weather Channel lies. Days that have not a drop of rain on the Doppler will have sudden flash thunderstorms. A day with a high of 90 degrees could have a mountain top that is forever in cold fog. I reserve one jersey pocket for one additional layer, either a wind vest or a rain jacket that will keep the weather from ruining my day.
7. Thick Heavy Tires
Forget light, expensive racing tires. When riding across the country, you’re better off with thick, cheap tires. And fill them all the way up to the maximum recommended pressures to avoid pinch flats. I got only 5 punctures. I used one pair of Specialized Armadillo tires for the whole ride. They certainly have my personal endorsement.
8. This Can be One Boring Country
I never thought I could fall asleep while riding my bike. I came close on this trip. Another cyclist told me he had fallen asleep and ran into a cornfield. Everyone thinks that this country has beautiful sights—and it does. There’s the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and lots of others. But in-between those points are long, straight featureless roads and a sameness of surroundings that can stretch for hours. Do you remember being bored out of your mind taking interstate rides in the family station wagon? It’s worse. It takes even longer on a bike and you can’t even make faces at cars behind you.
Now don’t get me wrong. I did find enough beauty to warrant almost a thousand photos. There were great mountains, flowers, rock formations and the like. I’ll remember the waves in the wheat fields and the treeless deserts. But there were whole days that didn’t warrant my camera to be turned on. One day’s wheat field looked like the next, and so on. The straight roads flat smooth roads through Arizona and New Mexico made me feel like I was pedaling without progress as if I was on a stationery bike against a big diorama.
9. Take Time to Dwell
In terms of personal journeys, this was an epic one. Though many days I was in a hurry to get through the ride and end up in the hotel, I knew I would regret not stopping enough times and enjoying the journey. Many historical sites were ignored. Dozens of curious locals were not talked to. Even a quaint bike museum was given short shrift. While the goal of this particular trip was to get across the USA in the minimum amount of days, I would advise others to take a few more days and dwell on the unique and interesting sites as well as meet people along the way.
10. Know When You’re Done
Unless you are a die-hard adventurer, riding your bike across the Unites States is a signature, memorable and life-defining trip. You don’t need to do it again, do it with a different route, go around the world, do it on a unicycle, etc. You are done. Remember, you just took a lot of time off: time off work, time away from your family and/or loved ones. That’s not including all the time you took to train for this, which is probably equal to the trip itself. Now that is a lot of debt you have incurred. If your job or family and loved ones don’t mind you being away for all this time, you have other problems to consider. But if you were missed, keep in mind that the only reason you could take a whole month off go away to do your own thing was because every body indulged you. To put it very bluntly, they catered to your selfish interest. You have to make it up. Coming back from this ride and telling people you’d now like to plan for Mt Everest is not going to make you very popular.
06-02-04, 04:39 PM
#2
pedalphile
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I love being able to stuff myself with as much food as my stomach can take before I go to bed, and then waking up with my stomach growling. For me that's one of the perks of touring! I love that a pot of plain spagetti, with not even salt, can still taste fantastic right to the last strand. Ah, touring: a bike ride between meals...
06-02-04, 05:07 PM
#3
Up there!
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Thanks for sharing. A great read!
__________________
Visit https://www.rooview.com.au a personal, independent and honest restaurant guide for South Australia!
Visit https://www.rooview.com.au a personal, independent and honest restaurant guide for South Australia!
06-03-04, 10:33 PM
#4
back of the autobus
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A friend of mine was on that ride too. Quite an amazing accomplishment.
https://www.bamacyclist.com/journal20...4/2004Fast.htm
https://www.bamacyclist.com/journal20...4/2004Fast.htm
06-04-04, 05:05 AM
#5
Lovin' my Fixie
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Good stuff. Interestiing and well written. Welcome back to the world of reality. I only wish I could have such an adventure.
06-04-04, 09:12 AM
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Thanks for the tips and the laughs too 
. Seriously, that was great. Perhaps you should join me in Italy- I've never felt the inclination to fall asleep while riding through Italy... not once!
I always tell people that Italy is like a canvas, and the artwork is fabulous. No complaints here at all.
I always eat more while touring and still come back fitter than I left. It's always at least one gelato and a coca-cola per two hours, plus lunch and a big breakfast in the mornings before I leave. There's no point in holding back on the food. Bonking sucks.
Koffee
. Seriously, that was great. Perhaps you should join me in Italy- I've never felt the inclination to fall asleep while riding through Italy... not once! I always tell people that Italy is like a canvas, and the artwork is fabulous. No complaints here at all.
I always eat more while touring and still come back fitter than I left. It's always at least one gelato and a coca-cola per two hours, plus lunch and a big breakfast in the mornings before I leave. There's no point in holding back on the food. Bonking sucks.
Koffee
06-04-04, 10:48 AM
#8
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Great read, thanks for the insight!! Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to cover __ miles?
Time to make the donuts, gotta bulk up for the tour!
~Steve
Time to make the donuts, gotta bulk up for the tour!
~Steve
06-04-04, 01:16 PM
#9
One knee is enough
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Thanks for the post. Doing the PAC tour is a dream ride. Everett, Washington to Williamsburg, Virginia - 3,400 miles - 26 days - 135 miles per day
A friend of mine did the PAC Tour Elite a couple of years ago averaging about 180 miles per day.
PAC TOUR
A friend of mine did the PAC Tour Elite a couple of years ago averaging about 180 miles per day.
PAC TOUR
Last edited by SchreiberBike; 06-04-04 at 01:21 PM.
06-04-04, 02:35 PM
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Originally Posted by Revtor
Great read, thanks for the insight!! Out of curiosity, how long did it take you to cover __ miles?
Time to make the donuts, gotta bulk up for the tour!
~Steve
Time to make the donuts, gotta bulk up for the tour!
~Steve
06-04-04, 05:44 PM
#11
Every lane is a bike lane
Originally Posted by Koffee Brown
I always eat more while touring and still come back fitter than I left. It's always at least one gelato and a coca-cola per two hours, plus lunch and a big breakfast in the mornings before I leave. There's no point in holding back on the food. Bonking sucks.
__________________
I am clinically insane. I am proud of it.
That is all.
I am clinically insane. I am proud of it.
That is all.
06-07-04, 11:21 AM
#12
One less car
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Do you remember being bored out of your mind taking interstate rides in the family station wagon? It’s worse. It takes even longer on a bike and you can’t even make faces at cars behind you.
Thanks for the laugh, memories are just to vivid.
Jay
06-08-04, 06:50 AM
#13
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Originally Posted by novatoroadie
We covered 3490 miles in 31 days of riding. It's a little over 110 miles per day. That doesn't include one rest day in Topeka, KS.
06-08-04, 08:30 AM
#14
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Fantasitic adventure. Congratulations on completing such a MAJOR event. Did you have physical problems with being on the bike for so long? Sore butt, aching back, etc?
-mark
-mark
06-08-04, 01:20 PM
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Originally Posted by bicycle_girl
Was that loaded touring? I have a question about your comment about heart rate monitor, don't leave it home. In which way would you have used it?
Knowing my heart rate kept me from blowing up on a long uphill. I noticed other riders, especially in pace lines, roar up hill and then have to recover on the downhill. I think there is a tendency to do that when using your speed as a measure of exertion. You don't ever seem to be going fast enough going uphill so you really step on it. Then of course, when you are going down hill you are going fast enough so you slack off. Meanwhile, your exertion is going all over the place. A heart rate monitor makes that obvious and helps even it all out.
06-08-04, 01:40 PM
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Originally Posted by geneman
Fantasitic adventure. Congratulations on completing such a MAJOR event. Did you have physical problems with being on the bike for so long? Sore butt, aching back, etc?
-mark
-mark
1. Saddle sores. One could have been a problem if it opened up. I used a patch a few days. That helped a lot. Many other riders were using lots of chamois cream and patches were in high demand. I did hear complaints of open sores. I’d definitely pack some patches on a long ride (Johnson and Johnson makes them, 3" x 3" full adhesive back)
2. Hands. Blisters on my hands (middle of base of palms) turned into calluses. I get blistered there because when I climb I get out of my saddle and then my hands exert alternating forces on the hoods. Guys that climb in the saddle should suffer from that, I think. Also, my advice is to change hand position often.
3. Feet. I was getting a blister on the side of my foot but I put moleskin on it for a few days and the problem went away. Note: pack moleskin.
4. Knees. After days of pushing big gears or climbing I would sometimes get a dull ache that I imagined was the cartilage in my knees. That would go away if I took it easy and made a conscious effort to use lower gears.
5. Back. Months before the ride, by lower back started acting up – mostly after long climbs in the saddle. I started doing reverse curls (50 a day). I didn’t have back problems during this 32 day ride but that may also have been due to a lot of climbing out of the saddle.
6. Neck. You do get tired of holding your head up, especially if you have maintain an aggressive position on a road bike (low and forward). Once again, I think hours in the saddle are the best preparation. During the ride, it helps to rotate your head every now and then.
I like to think that stretching every night helped keep me loose and prevent any leg aches and pains. I did stretches for quads, hamstrings and calves.
06-08-04, 05:29 PM
#17
Senior Member
Originally Posted by novatoroadie
7. Thick Heavy Tires
Forget light, expensive racing tires. When riding across the country, you’re better off with thick, cheap tires. And fill them all the way up to the maximum recommended pressures to avoid pinch flats. I got only 5 punctures. I used one pair of Specialized Armadillo tires for the whole ride. They certainly have my personal endorsement.
Forget light, expensive racing tires. When riding across the country, you’re better off with thick, cheap tires. And fill them all the way up to the maximum recommended pressures to avoid pinch flats. I got only 5 punctures. I used one pair of Specialized Armadillo tires for the whole ride. They certainly have my personal endorsement.
06-10-04, 06:09 PM
#19
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Originally Posted by novatoroadie
We covered 3490 miles in 31 days of riding. It's a little over 110 miles per day. That doesn't include one rest day in Topeka, KS.
thanks for a great read.
06-10-04, 09:33 PM
#20
Every lane is a bike lane
Originally Posted by sommers
Did you use a travel log online?
__________________
I am clinically insane. I am proud of it.
That is all.
I am clinically insane. I am proud of it.
That is all.
06-11-04, 02:11 PM
#21
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Originally Posted by sommers
I leave to ride across the country on Tuesday, from Seattle to New York City and I am giving myself about 56 days with a rest day every 6-7 days. I am doing Adventurecycling's Transamerica route--which route did you take and what time of year did you go? Did you use a travel log online?
thanks for a great read.
thanks for a great read.
06-11-04, 02:17 PM
#22
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Originally Posted by SchreiberBike
Thanks for the post. Doing the PAC tour is a dream ride. Everett, Washington to Williamsburg, Virginia - 3,400 miles - 26 days - 135 miles per day
A friend of mine did the PAC Tour Elite a couple of years ago averaging about 180 miles per day.
PAC TOUR
A friend of mine did the PAC Tour Elite a couple of years ago averaging about 180 miles per day.
PAC TOUR
06-13-04, 04:33 PM
#23
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Originally Posted by novatoroadie
If your job or family and loved ones don’t mind you being away for all this time, you have other problems to consider.
But seriously, great post!! Very enjoyable to read.
08-30-04, 08:03 PM
#24
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Roopinder
...my cousin was on that ride with you. His name is Stephen. I was reading Mike's updates every day. I never considered riding a bicycle before April 26, but now I have a road bike and I'm training for an ABB ride down the East Coast (Myrtle Beach, SC to St. Augustine, FL). It is only a week long trip, but you have to start somewhere. Congrats on the major accomplishment. I'll let you know how I do after I get done with my ride.
...my cousin was on that ride with you. His name is Stephen. I was reading Mike's updates every day. I never considered riding a bicycle before April 26, but now I have a road bike and I'm training for an ABB ride down the East Coast (Myrtle Beach, SC to St. Augustine, FL). It is only a week long trip, but you have to start somewhere. Congrats on the major accomplishment. I'll let you know how I do after I get done with my ride.
08-30-04, 08:51 PM
#25
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How much does a ride like this cost? I'm totally interested!