Before Your Long Bike Ride: What to Check and What to Bring

Week 2 of our 12-week cycling challenge taught us something that probably should have been obvious:

Planning the long ride matters almost as much as riding it.

It’s easy to look at a training plan, see a mileage goal, and think, Okay, we need to ride X miles this weekend.

But that number doesn’t tell you what the temperature will be, how much shade you’ll have, where you can refill your water, how hilly the route is, or whether you’re going to find yourself miles from the car wondering why you thought this was a good idea.

And when you’re trying to get bike fit again, those things matter.

Mileage Is Only Part of the Ride

Two 25-mile rides can be completely different experiences.

Twenty-five miles on a mostly flat, shaded trail on a cool morning is not the same ride as 25 miles of rolling hills in full sun when it’s hot and humid.

Same mileage. Very different ride.

That’s something we’re learning as we work through this training plan. It’s tempting to focus on the number because mileage is easy to measure. But when we plan our long ride now, we’re starting to look at the whole picture.

Before choosing the route, we need to ask:

• What will the weather be?
• How hot will it be by the time we’re finishing?
• Is the route shaded or exposed?
• How much climbing is involved?
• Where can we get more water?
• Are there places to stop if something isn’t going well?
• Does the route make sense for where we are in our training right now?

Because completing the planned mileage isn’t very useful if poor planning turns a training ride into an ordeal.

Check the Weather Before You Choose the Route

This one sounds ridiculously simple, but it can completely change the ride.

For a long ride, we don’t just want to look at the day’s high temperature. We want to know what the weather will be during the hours we’re actually riding.

If it’s going to get hot later, leaving earlier may make a huge difference.

Wind matters too. So does humidity. And obviously, if storms are possible, that needs to be part of the decision.

Sometimes the smartest training decision isn’t changing the mileage.

It’s changing when or where you ride it.

A shaded trail might be the better choice on a hot day. A more open route might be perfectly fine on a cooler morning. If the forecast looks miserable, moving the long ride by a day may make more sense than stubbornly sticking to the calendar.

The training plan is supposed to help us get stronger, not punish us for having access to a weather forecast.

Know Where Your Water Is Coming From

This may be the biggest lesson.

When you’re riding longer, carrying one bottle and hoping for the best isn’t much of a hydration strategy.

Before leaving, we want to know two things:

How much water can we carry?

and

Where can we get more?

That second question is especially important.

A route may pass convenience stores, parks, trailheads, campgrounds, or water fountains, but don’t assume they’ll be available. A fountain can be turned off. A store may be closed. A trail section that looks short on the map can feel considerably longer when you’re running low on water.

So now we’re trying to identify possible refill points before the ride rather than discovering them when we desperately need one.

And on hotter rides, we’re even more conservative about it. We’d much rather finish with water left than spend the last several miles rationing it.

Plan for Food Too

As our rides get longer, hydration isn’t the only thing we have to think about.

We also need enough fuel to keep riding.

That doesn’t mean turning every bike ride into a rolling buffet. It just means bringing something we know we can eat and making sure we haven’t accidentally planned a long ride with nothing available until we’re back at the car.

For us, part of this 12-week challenge is figuring out what works in the real world, not what looks perfect on paper.

What can we carry easily?

What actually sounds good after we’ve been riding for a while?

What sits well while we’re exercising?

Those are things you learn by doing.

Give Yourself an Escape Route

We’re also becoming big fans of routes that give us options.

A long out-and-back route can be simple, but once you’ve ridden 15 miles away from the car, there’s only one way home: another 15 miles.

Loops can be great, but some loops also leave you committed once you reach a certain point.

When possible, we like routes that have bailout options, places where we can shorten the ride if the weather changes, someone isn’t feeling good, we have a mechanical issue, or we simply misjudged the difficulty.

Using the bailout option isn’t failing the workout.

Sometimes it’s just making a smart decision.

There will always be another ride.

Don’t Let the Training Plan Boss You Around

This may be the biggest shift in how we’re thinking about the challenge.

The training plan gives us structure. That’s important.

But the plan doesn’t know whether it’s 95 degrees outside.

It doesn’t know that the route you chose has almost no shade.

It doesn’t know that the water fountain you were counting on is broken.

And it definitely doesn’t care that you’ve somehow managed to choose a route containing every hill in the county.

We do.

So we’re learning to treat the training plan as a guide, not a commandment.

The goal is to become strong enough to ride 50 miles comfortably at the end of 12 weeks. Making sensible adjustments along the way doesn’t interfere with that goal.

It probably makes us more likely to reach it.

Our Week 2 Takeaway

Going into this challenge, we thought a successful long ride mostly meant hitting the planned mileage.

Now we’re realizing that a successful long ride starts well before we get on the bike.

Check the weather.

Choose the right route.

Know where your water is coming from.

Bring enough fuel.

Have a backup plan.

And remember that the goal isn’t to prove how much suffering you can tolerate.

The goal is to get stronger so you can have more adventures.

That’s what we’re training for.

To watch your Week 2 on YouTube go Here: