LessEverything

I want to start riding 15+ miles a day in one session. I am going to try to accomplish this by riding 8 miles in the morning and 7 or 8 in the evening. Slowly I will shift all the mileage to the AM. I am hoping to accomplish this over the next 4 weeks. Is this the right way to do increase mileage?

(51)

Sounds fine. I started at 5 miles for a couple of weeks, bumped it to 11 for a couple, then to 16 for a couple, then 20 for a month and now I try to get in 25 a day. That is about where I am capped right now due to time constraints. I could probably do 30, but then I'd be useless for the rest of the day.

Pamestique 

Set a goal and then work towards it. Let your body judge how fast and hard you can ride. 15 miles in 4 weeks is a reasonable goal and should be doable. Good luck!

Markok765

Ride with a group.

Stujoe

That is what I would say too. If you feel good, do more. If you don't feel as good, just do a little more.

Even though I am up to the point where I can do 25-30 miles, the first 3 or so are still the absolute worst for me. Once I get over that personal hump and get warmed up, I feel usually feel real good for the next many miles.

Terrierman

Totally do able. Good luck and enjoy yourself.

CastIron

You can do more than you think.

jaxgtr

That highly doable. Like Pam said, just let your body be the judge.

flip18436572

Let your body tell you what you can and can't do and do not over work it. You can easily go from 5 miles to 25 miles in just a few weeks, but you have to let your body tell you when you can increase it.

I did 16 this morning and will try and do 10 - 20 tonight.

Skoper

Just go out an ride, Set goals, but don't over think things.
Go for a 15 mile ride. If you need to take a break along the way go ahead and take one.
I used to take 2 while doing 15 miles back in June.
Today is my long ride day. I will go on a 30 mile today, and I no longer need to take breaks.

Good Luck

andymac

My approach when I started commuting was to simply get on my bike and ride the 17 miles into work. This made accomplishing my goal of riding 34 miles a day easy as I was now 17 miles from my house with only one option to get home. Rather than focus on distances I varied the number of days I did the ride per week. I originally started with 2 days a week and increased it to 4 as I got used to it. Recently I broke a few ribs in a crash and had to take 6 weeks off so I have scaled back to 3 days a week until I am fully healed.
It is easier than most people expect it to be. You can make it difficult by trying to ride faster but you can just as easily loaf along. My recommendation would be to ride with a destination in mind rather than a distance goal. I find that if I have somewhere that I want to get to it is easy to get on my bike and go where I find it difficult to ride laps around my neighbourhood even though the distance may be the same. As a university student (many years ago) I used to ride 20 miles to a bakery in the next town and buy an apple fritter then ride home. They were good apple fritters, my riding was quite inspired.

gcottay

I agree with the comments above.

IMHO you are doing exactly the right thing.

Based on my experience -- an old guy who has biked away 80 pounds in the last year -- the best trick is to just ride, ride, ride at a pace and in a gear that is comfortable for you. As the miles accumulate, have fun riding a bit longer and faster.

Early this season 15 miles at even 10 or 12 MPH would have been a most serious challenge for me. After less than 2,000 miles of riding since then, those fifteen miles are just the start of a good ride at an average speed of 16 or 17. Those are, I think, very typical results of just riding.

George

webist

I agree completely. Folks were impressed years ago when I could only say I did 3 - 5 miles per day. After a few years, my daily target is at least 20 miles with a minimum of 10 (Still working full-time.) 30 and 40 mile days, especially on weekends are actually easy now. I'm not racing. I tend to ride alone. I'm working on fitness and weight control and completely enjoying the ride.

LessEverything

update: I did 20 miles today in just over an hour (64 minutes total time), I had to stop 6 times for about 25 seconds each to wait for traffic to cross the road. Its alot easier to ride without pulling a kid in a baby trailer.

solveg

Wow! I'll bet you surprised yourself! Good job!

jaxgtr

Excellent job. See you'll be doing a metric soon.