Can you break it up a bit in case you don't have time or energy? Take transit for 10+ miles and bring your bike aboard?

I'm confused. You said your work is 25 miles away, but the cities are 11 miles apart. Do you live and work on the far side of both?

Maybe they've gotten closer together in the last 12 years.

Yeah I googled and it is more like 20+ miles so the 11 was a typo or referred to the highway part.

For me, it would be too far except for maybe once a week, or ride there one day, leave the bike overnight and ride home the next, and grab car rides in between.

What about an electric bike?


Over here in socialist Europe well in Belgium if your commute is over 15kms you get an electric bike provided by the company via the state, you have to do more than 50% per year to qualify. The icing on the cake is you get 25 cents per km tax free in your pocket.


So if your commute was 25 miles = 40 kms , cycling 5 days a week you'd get €400 extra tax free per month.


Anyway just a thought even though you're in the US.

I take the bus most of the way to work and bike the last 5 miles, and then bike all the way home 17 miles with 1000ft climbing twice a week. Any more than that is just too time consuming.

Nice plan. The only downside your limited speeds for ebikes. I just got one that assists me up to 28mph (45kph) & I can do about 21-22 mph avg on a 16 mile one way commute accounting for lights & stop signs gets me to work in under 50m. With a little more effort on the non ebike I can do this in an hour,

I once worked with a guy who was doing a 25 mile commute.:thumb:
He said in the first 6 weeks he lost all his excess body fat.:lol:

I ride to work two days a week, 14 miles each way. I've lost a lot of weight. I didn't even know it was possible, since I was fairly thin to start.

that sounds ideal

I think 25 miles is at the top end of what people would consider commuting by bicycle daily for sure. It's a big ride. On a flat ride, I feel like just about anyone could go from the couch to making that in 1-1.5 hours. But averaging 22'ish mph for two to three hours a day is a lot of riding and that's pushing pretty heavy even if it is flat. I think your best bet is to allow 2 hours for the commute either way. I think most people could probably push 15 mph all day as long as they were hydrated and kept fuel coming into their system.

Your commute route sounds nicer than mine. I do a similar distance about 24 miles each way from home. I think you could do it in 1:30 each way assuming 16mph or so is not too fast and will let you leave a little in the tank for the ride home. That's about the speed I do it but I also have a fair amount of lights with a little bit of climbing. So you could go faster if you have less lights or the bike path is not too crowded. One recommendation is to be realistic and only try it once or twice a week initially if going from home. Then you could park and ride the other days from Sacremento if you find a nice shorter 11 mile route (using back roads only). That's basically what I do but my full ride is from Bloomfield, NJ to NYC. Park and ride for me is Lenonia, NJ to NYC which is about 10 miles each way. After you get comfortable with the commute, then you can increase to three times a week from home weather permitting. That's about the most I've done so far in a week. It adds up to 190 miles a week which has been plenty for me. Finally, I don't ride on the weekend an leave it for the family. So I use the weekend as recovery. If I don't feel good on Monday, then I'll usually take an "easy week." For me thats just doing park and ride for the week.

My commute is 35 kms each way, so a couple of miles less than your planned distance. I do it 2-3 times per week unless it's raining torrentially or way below freezing.

I am riding tomorrow and Friday this week (in a dry break of a few days in the monsoon here in Korea) and I have been happy all day because of the weather.

Long commutes are great: you don't need to buy gym membership or pay for therapy.

Yeah; when I had a gym membership, I'd go 3-4 days a week, spend 15-20 minutes on a treadmill, (old knee injury limits my running) 20-30 on upper body and 30 on a stationary bike. Now I spend 25 minutes on a non-stationary bike twice a day, plus whatever other time I feel like. (Usually a leisurely 5-7 miles through the park averaging 8-10mph just to enjoy the sights. Sometimes a ~3 mile speed run at a couple of the hills I used to just walk up.) Best part; it doesn't cost $40/mo. Worst part; it keeps costing more in maintenance and upgrades.

I currently ride 15 miles one way to work. By late September we're going to be moving to a new location that is 26 miles from home. I plan to try but I don't really know if I'll be able to keep it up.

Some parts of the route are pretty sketchy. One 1-mile-long stretch is extremely dicey - it would have been a stopper but they just built a greenway along it. That road has claimed 3 bicyclist's lives in the last 3 years. I'm a bit concerned that the greenway will be slippery when wet (part of it is a boardwalk over swampland) and may not be plowed in the winter.

If I ride the whole way to work it's 17.5 miles each way. However, I mostly split the ride ride with the light rail. It's 5.5 miles to the rail station and another 2.5 miles from the other station to work.

Not many people realized this thread was 12 years old......

Is it against forum rules to revive an old thread?

I have no idea...I would assume that if it were that anything over a certain age would be automatically locked or archived. I didn't revive this thread, just hopped in it and was confused with the date until I started reading. I responded myself yesterday and didn't notice until today.

Gotcha. I know what you're saying. I frequent other forums that frown on resurrecting older threads. I wasn't sure if BF had the same policy.

What kind of wheels are you rolling on now? Do you have secure bike parking at both ends of the commute? How much do you need to carry?

For example, a USB thumbdrive is a lot easier to transport than a laptop.

Budget to get going?

What I'd do is get a good road bike. Skinny tires, CF frame? Sub 20 lbs?

Try your commute a couple of days a week. Could you ride one way, and take a bus, or carpool back the other way?

Ride to work, day 1.
Carpool back.
Carpool to work day 2.
Ride back.

Start easy, see how it goes, then work up to several days a week.

Of course, consider family and other aspects of your life.

I'm not "commuting" regularly, but do errands and etc, usually about 15 to 20 miles each way. Often a little faster in the mornings and slower in the evenings. It is pretty easy to work up to it.

Good Luck

I read this thread with great interest. I've asked several time about my 22 mile commute (one way). I've done it, but it left me so tired the first day, I didn't have the energy to try again. However, I did get a new bike recently, and I'm about to try it again. Wish me luck!

Well, I do wish you luck !

I work 23 miles from home and I only do the full commute by bike once in a while, meaning max once a week. Mostly I commute by train + brompton and it takes me 50-55 minutes one way, including 25 minutes during which I can read or rest. When I do it by bike, it is more like 1h30 to 1h40 plus 5 min to change clothes or 10 min to shower. So overall, I find it just takes too much time and is not compatible with having a life beside work and commute. It is also tiresome. I mean, riding 45 miles a day during holidays is easy, but doing the same in addition to a full working day, although my work is purely intellectual, is a lot.

sure. even half of the distance or less is a nice ride. Just pick a good place to park and unload. Some biking is better than no biking.

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I am pretty sure there are other people on this forum commuting between Davis and Sacramento. I hear you often have a good tailwind in one direction! Could you also ride somewhere to a bus, put the bike on the bus for X distance, and then get off and ride the rest?

When I used to live in Davis and work in Sac, I had a coworker who did the one-way commute once a week. He'd ride in and bus back. Riding back meant a lot of headwind.

My current commute is about 7 miles each way but we are contemplating moving to a place that's about 20 miles away from where I work. Possible barriers to biking the new commute are stop lights/intersections on the route and whether I can ride my road bike instead of commuter bike with rack/panniers and 40c tires). We're supposed to move into a new building next year and I am not sure if the new office setup will offer such luxuries as showers or a private office to change in and store my bike, etc.

Pretty sure that all Yolobuses have bike racks. Yolobus - Bikes on Buses

No policy either way that I know of. Sometimes it's fun to see updates on a bike project or commute, or to an old news item. The only thing that really gets annoying is when people don't realize it's an old thread, and respond directly to (argue with) posters who are no longer around. ;)

Yep, it is a matter of time.

25 miles takes me about 1.5 hours (I'm a strong cyclist on a fast road bike).
Doing it every day is exhausting.
If I slow down and ride at about 85% of my normal biking speed, I'm a lot more refreshed for the ride home and for the next day.
Fueling your body is critical when riding this much. You need a good mix of protien and carbs
(ucan is amazing for sustained energy https://www.generationucan.com/)

Because I like to tinker, I tried mechanical doping. Increases my cruising speed from 18mph to 25mph, and reduces my cycle time from 90 minutes to 60 minutes. I just use a small 350 watt motor (which roughly matches the 250-300 watts from my legs). Makes the commute kind of fun! :-)