Long Distance Competition/Ultracycling, Randonneuring and Endurance Cycling - How hard is it to bike 100 miles in one day?

On my biking tour, I plan to go 100 miles a day to get to my destination at the time I want to arrive. How hard is this?

With respect, couldn't this have been asked within the other thread you started?

As someone else has advised, you'll probably get more info over in the touring forum.

Impossible for some people, easy for some people, with a lot of us in the middle.

If you've never ridden 100 miles in a day, I sure wouldn't plan on doing it every day on a tour. Or if you do plan on it, go do it a few times beforehand so you know what to expect.

On my biking tour, I plan to go 100 miles a day to get to my destination at the time I want to arrive. How hard is this?

if you've never done 100 miles before: just about impossible, depending on how "tough" you are (mentally, that is)

if you've done 100 miles before: tough, but it would get easier as the days go on.

i'd do some back-to-back centuries over a weekend and see how you feel.

Just go ride one. Go slow, so not to burn out before the end.

What is the longest distance you have ridden so far? Have you ridden 100 miles in one day? If not, the first time you do one, it can be difficult ... but once you've done quite a few, it can get easier depending, of course, on weather and terrain.

I don't know when your trip is, but if I were you, I would aim to try to ride at least a couple centuries and a back-to-back century or two before embarking on 14 days of back-to-back centuries.

100 miles per day seems like an unreasonable goal on a self-supported tour.

100 miles per day seems like an unreasonable goal on a self-supported tour.


It is? Why is that?

Everything is relative, my friend. I know people who tour and average 30 miles a day. I know people who easily do over 100 miles a day.

100 was not enough. We kept going until we reached 143.. have a 20 minute lunch. two 10 minute breaks. Plus a couple energy bars. A power drink. The pain goes away. You'll muddle thru it.

I agree with cyclezealot. If you take food and drink breaks at regular intervals, it gets a lot easier. I have learnt the hard way. The first 100km ride I did was with no food or water with me. With no guidance at all, I was under the impression that exercise and food do not go together. It took me over 6 hours to complete the 100km.

Of course you need some (more than basic) fitness, but with enough food and drink it gets a lot more doable.

During your couple few minute breaks, stretch , take in some power drinks. Massage your quads, you'll be fine. It's called a quick recovery.

It's certainly doable (I averaged 100 miles per day over a 15-day tour once), but don't expect to be able to do anything else but ride, eat, sleep, and recover during that time.

It's certainly doable (I averaged 100 miles per day over a 15-day tour once), but don't expect to be able to do anything else but ride, eat, sleep, and recover during that time.

You know, not everyone averages the same speed while touring. I'm not attacking Chris_W, I'm just jumping in here to make a general point. It just seems like I read a lot of threads where it sounds like a lot of people think there is a general standard as far as daily touring mileage goes.

I know a guy who works all day on a computer, 40-60 hours a week. He has four kids, two dogs, etc. He has a full life. He tries to exercise , but it's intermittant. Every summer he gets the touring bug, and generally has to ride himself into shape the first week of the tour, which is fine and dandy, that's just the way he does it. At the end of his tour he generally averages 50-60 miles a day. He averages about 10-12 mph on his touring rig. He's usually ready to go back to work when he gets home from his tours, in order to rest up.

I know a guy who is semi-retired from his career. He is an exercise addict, he works out and rides all the time. He occasionally competes in long distance events and runs marathons. Every summer he gets the touring bug and usually backs off on his training before the tour, in order to rest up for it. On his tours he generally averages 100-140 miles a day. He travels light and probably averages 15 mph on his touring rig. He's usually well-rested by the time he gets back from his tours.

I don't understand why I keep reading posts from people stating that if you ride more than "X" amount of miles then you won't have any fun, or you're over doing it, since it's more than they, themselves typically average. Everyone tours differently. Some folks have to stop and have a spiritual experience at every flower they pass, and have to take 5 pictures, from 3 different angles everytime they see a songbird. Some folks only snap a quick picture or two if they see something or someone completely outlandish. Myself, I rarely take any pictures at all.
Some people like to camp, some don't. Most importantly, I think that: how many miles one is able to comfortably ride over the course of their tour is going to directly depend on what kind of physical condition one is in before the tour starts.

On the other hand, the OP claims in another thread that he/she plans to go 30 miles a day on their trip. Go figure.

On my biking tour, I plan to go 100 miles a day to get to my destination at the time I want to arrive. How hard is this? If you have to ask, then you're too ill prepared to try it.

Real riders, know about their ability. Fake, silly people post ridiculous questions to the Internet.

Try riding 20 miles a day for a week - don't post in the LD forum again until you do that.

If you have to ask, then you're too ill prepared to try it.

Real riders, know about their ability. Fake, silly people post ridiculous questions to the Internet.

Try riding 20 miles a day for a week - don't post in the LD forum again until you do that.

This is absolutely the most idiotic post I've read in some time. Thanks, Dick C, for the laugh. Real BF posters give helpful feedback. Fake, silly people post responses full of ill-advised punctuation choices (i.e. "...riders, know about...".

To jahoga: Others are right. Nutrition and hydration at all stages of your ride - before, during and after - are key. You should do a few weekends with back to back centuries, then work in some Monday morning rides to get a feel for what your legs will feel like on the third day. The likely answer: they'll feel like jello. But if you can deal with that you can deal with the rides. Best of luck!

Two additional notes:

First, Jahoga... you should do some of these rides with weight thrown in your panniers (if you're rided unsupported). That's going to make a big difference in how much the miles will impact your legs.

Second, figures that in my punctuation tirade against R. Cranium I'd mess up on my own punctuation (no ending parenthesis)... Just wanted to note that before someone else got to it. The moral of the story remains, though. Richard Cranium is a d!ck.

I have wasted way too much time on crazyguyonabike, and there are zero tour journals on there where people average over 100 miles per day. There was a time when I could have done that credit card touring. I may get to that point again. But some questions are self-answering, and the OP seems to be one of those. If you have to ask if you can do this, you can't. And there are very few people that can.

The people that stop for every interesting picture and hiking trail seem to be a good argument against my conjectures here. I've seen tour journals like that where the tourist would get in 60 miles and stop at the drop of a hat. You'd think they could get in another 40 miles without a problem. But almost nobody does. I think there is a reason for that.

On my biking tour, I plan to go 100 miles a day to get to my destination at the time I want to arrive. How hard is this?

Anywhere from impossible to not that hard depending on your conditioning level and your bike/rig weight.

Since you ask I have to assume you've never ridden 100 miles. Try it without a loaded bike first to get an idea. Then with progressively more weight.

However, the way for the novice rider to succeed with this is to ride for an hour and rest for an hour. And repeat this cycle. Going at a slow pace and taking 16 hours or so to do it. Once you get in better shape you can ride for 90 minutes and rest for 15. Then when you are in super condition you can ride most of the distance without stopping except to eat and drink.

This is absolutely the most idiotic post I've read in some time.
OK - of course you can ride a 100 miles everyday- why even ask. End of story - sorry for actually giving the question any thought - my bad.......

100 miles per day is a little much for a "tour." I don't know what the total distance of the OP's tour is, but I would think that the purpose of a tour is to see the route and stop at interesting places along the route. Several back-to-back days of 100 miles sounds more like a distance event rather than a "tour." Hmmm... then again... maybe I'm wrong - they call it the Tour d' France, right?

I want to hear from Jahoga again ....... what is the longest distance you've ridden? What distance do you currently ride on your daily rides? You do daily rides, right?


I believe Jahoga is thinking of doing 14 days of 100 mile days. 100 miles a day can be a tour but you've got to be in shape to do that. You've got to be used to commuting a fairly long distance to and from work every day, or going out for decent rides every day after work, and you should be used to riding centuries or back-to-back centuries on the weekends, in order for 100 miles a day, for 14 days, to feel comfortable.

I do know someone who tours like that, but he rides a lot, and he is not a slow rider either.

If you have to ask, then you're too ill prepared to try it.

Real riders, know about their ability. Fake, silly people post ridiculous questions to the Internet.

Try riding 20 miles a day for a week - don't post in the LD forum again until you do that.

but at some point you have to take a leap and get beyond your limiters. what's the worst that can happen, anyway? even a failed tour could make for a good story, i figure.

for some, it makes sense (mentally & physically) to ramp up things like this - for others, they could dive right in and survive... only one way to tell. let him do it, and report back!

As I said before, I really think 100 miles per day on good roads is doable for someone without a huge amount of training. My preparation for doing 1500 miles in 15 days (with full camping and cooking gear, and wild-camping about half the time) was not that much. I was about 27 years old, 150 lbs in weight. My daily commute to my computer-based work was only about 2 miles each way, and the other riding I would do was 1 or 2 reasonably hard road rides per week of 20 to 40 miles each and maybe 1 or 2 hours of mountain biking on singletrack. I did a few longer rides during the three months leading up to it, but probably never more than about 60 miles in a day or 80 miles in 2 days.

I'd done a few two-week long tours before, and knew that I'd get more fitness as the days went on. I had expected it to take me about 20 days at my more typical 70 miles per day average. However, the first few days went well, averaging about 80 miles per day, and then I started getting even fitter. The best part was almost at the end where I did about 600 miles in 5 days, with a longest day of about 130 miles. The terrain was challenging enough - northeastern US and eastern Canada (southern Ontario, upstate NY, VT, NH, coastal Maine, NB, NS to Cape Breton Island), and the weather was generally kind to me with almost no rain and no major winds. My daily average speed ranged from about 14-16 mph.

Part of the reason for speeding up my voyage and not hanging around was the goal at the end of the ride - spending 10 days with my girlfriend (now wife) at her parent's home at the top of the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. My 10-day visit became just over two weeks because I arrived early.

The easiest day was the last, because I only had about 70 miles to do; the last 50 of which was with my girlfriend who got dropped off with a borrowed bike to ride it with me. Unfortunately, she had to hitch-hike the last 20 miles due to a flat tire - despite our best efforts we were unable to get the tire off of the rim to replace the tube.

As I said above, if you want to do this then you have to devote yourself to riding, eating, and sleeping, and not having much time for doing anything else. Someone above mentioned that traveling at this pace would not be much of a "tour", but I certainly considered it to be so. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. You don't need a huge amount of training to do it, but some experience with less intense tours would certainly help a lot - knowledge and experience is as important as fitness, I think.

Being flat or mountainous makes a huge difference. Flat,piece of cake. It's mostly mental.. 100 miles in Iowa , I could almost do it after laying off the bike for winter. 100 is only a number. Once you've done it, some strive for 200. Again take breaks, do some stretches. Eat a hi carb lunch. You'll get there before dark, as long as you wait until after Daylight savings returns. Should you be reasonably fit, that is.

Man, there's some incredibly tough people here! I'm impressed.

I avoided answering this question because it's such a nebulous one and everyone has different strengths, traverse different landscapes and have individual bike packing protocols.

I can see now that I'd be way down on the scale of what is considered a strong touring cyclist.

On my last big trip (through Alaska, Yukon and the length of British Columbia) I managed just one day over 100 miles (a relatively flat stretch) and most were closer to 100 kilometres (60mi), over the 2 month duration. Some mountainous days (or days after) I'd only manage 50 kms! and I didn't ride Sundays (though I'm not religious!).

I had ridden 8,000 km the year before, 2,500 before I left, in May, and was in randonneuring shape. My bike was heavily loaded -- with full camping/cooking gear and camera gear to meet sponsorship obligations. The north is, er, somewhat lumpy.

Still, it sounds like the posters above would leave me in the dust ... and those northern roads are plenty dusty!:)

If you're going downhill, and the wind is in your favor, it is very easy. :D.

simple answer, to do 100 miles a day over 14 days it all depends on the engine(you) not what other people have done.

can it be done, probably.
will it be enjoyable, it could be, or it could be torture.

I regularly ride over 100 miles a day but depending on weather, roads, and scenery it has been both for me.