Effectively Plotting a Long Bike Route

Bike far!

Once you’ve been at this whole cycling thing for a while, you start to realize that there are a lot of places around your home that you can travel to. The longer you can go on your bike, the more confidence you have, and the more you have a need to break out of your usual routine. So how can you plot an effective bike route without getting lost, and making sure that you don’t exhaust yourself trying to find your way back home? If you really want to plot a long, challenging bike route for your next weekend, follow these quick tips.

First, make sure you bring a watch while you go on your next bike ride. What’s the purpose of the watch? You’ll want to keep track of your time as accurately as possible. Even if you don’t have a digital stop-watch feature on your watch, you can at least keep track of when you left and when you arrived back home. Make sure to make a mental note of this time after you returned.

Once home, map out the route you just completed. How far did you go in an hour, for example? Take this time and try to determine your miles per hour. If you didn’t go for an hour, it’s still possible to find out your mph. Simply take the time that you were out – say a half an hour – and multiply it by two to get an hour. Multiply your distance traveled – say four miles – by the same number (8 miles an hour on average). Now you know the kind of distance you can handle.

Once you have your average speed handy, you can start looking at Google Maps and seeing how far you can get in a longer measure of time. If you can get eight miles – four there and four back – in an hour, how far can you go in two? Even two and a half? Don’t push yourself too hard; instead, try to find a long bike route that will give you a moderate, brisk exercise.

Remember that you’ll have to spend much of your time coming back, as well, and you’ll be ready to plot a long bike route that will have you home at a fairly predictable time. Voila! You’ve plotted a long bike route. Try to avoid hills as much as possible, as these can really throw wrenches into your plans. If you’re in training, hills can be a welcome challenge.

You can use this route as your “long” bike route, and once you have the confidence that comes with it, you can start taking some Saturdays and throwing caution to the wind, simply exploring! Just don’t try to do it all at once.

Photo Credits: wvs

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Originally posted 2009-07-23 05:04:51.

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