I suspect there's a lot of wishful thinking going on. Someone reads a book or journal about a similar tour and figures, 'if they can do it, why can't I'?

And, like chasm54 says, I think there is some extrapolation ... they figure that they can ride at 25 km/h for an hour ... therefore they should be able to cover 200 km in 8 hours. 8 hours is a typical day of work. If a person can get up in the morning and go to work for 8 hours, a person should be able to get up in the morning and ride their bicycle for 8 hours. After all, that 1-hour ride is a pleasant, relaxing diversion in the evening, 8 hours of a pleasant, relaxing diversion would be wonderful!!


I keep telling people like this to go do back-to-back centuries or back-to-back 200Ks and see what a pleasant, relaxing diversion it is ... see how it feels to get up the second morning and do it all again ... see how it feels to ride 10 or 12 hours a day ... see how it feels to ride into a headwind for hours on end, or up endless hills, or through a driving rain, or in the cold. Once they've done that, they can decide for themselves if the tour they have in mind is a good idea or not.

Oddly ... I've never had a single person come back and tell me that they did just that. In fact, most of them don't come back at all.