long distances are fine, as long as you're ready for them*. i recently rode up to nyack, ny for the first time (i live in the bronx), which is a ride that's jam-packed with roadies - it's about fifty miles, over the george washington bridge, up 9W, and to Nyack where there's a coffee shop called the Runcible Spoon that's packed with bikers. some continue on to Bear Mountain.

*food, water, and a comfortable gearing. if you struggle up the hills on your commute, you should gear down for the hills you'll encounter on a longer ride when you're tired.

weekend laps of central park are nice, too.

as long as ur on a comfortable gear and have plenty of water, i think long distance on track bikes are fine. when ur in the zone, u don't even notice that you've been pedaling like a madman.
queer: how many crazy hills are we talking about. i've been thinking about heading out there/

long distance riding
 

hello, i'm new to this forum and was wondering how many of you have gone on long distance rides (50-100 miles)?
i live in queens (nyc) and go to school in boston. the longest rides i've gone on have been 10-15 mile rides but am looking to go longer distances.
how are long distance rides on fixed-gears? where have you gone and what routes do you take?

thanks for the help.

do you want to ride places, sight see, or get some longer training-style rides in?

Long distances on fixies are fine. one you get going past the point of getting tired, your body somehow bounces back and you feel new again!

just keep eating...and fluids, of course.

did 200km one day, and the very next did 160km. definately not an issue.

they're not crazy, but there's a fair amount of up and down. have you used gmap-pedometer.com ? you can turn on the elevation feature, which puts an ele chart beneath the route map. it's an awesome feature, lets you visualize the ups and downs.

also, right off the bridge, if you go south a bit you can get on to River Road, which is a beautiful, quiet road that goes down the cliffs and sort of runs between the cliffs and the river. there are two big hills on it, the last one is the big climb back up the cliffs to 9W.

ps. i'm mattio on the nyc fixed board. hey.

The MS150 was awesome, but next year I am going to do the century ride day 1. It's all about training. The best training is with friends. Pick a destination for lunch, ride out there, eat lunch, take some photos, ride back. Remember your water bottle and some power bars, and tools in case you flat.

Oh, and Vonnegut rules.

echoing ryand:

some vonnegut rules. galapagos was hugely disappointing, slaughterhouse 5 was masterful, as was mother night.

having a destination and biking with friends is fun.

If you want to make good time on a long distance ride, it's helpful to pick either a maximally boneheaded simple route or a route that you know really well. Like, fifty miles up a highway, turn around and fifty miles back down. Otherwise you will be spending time squinting at a map and scratching your head that could be spent spinning away kms.

This may help not only your time but the overall feel of the ride. For me the zen of LD riding gets farked up when I have to stop and dig out my map.

Not only tools to fix a flat, but to fix other stuff as well. Never know what will go wrong 50 miles from your house, and the old city folk fall back of "hopping on public transportation" in the case of something big doesn't generally apply. Also, a lot of fit issues surface on a long ride and its nice to be able to adjust. Your seat angle or bar height or whatever may feel fine when you're only riding 10 miles at a time, but 60 miles in it could be a very different story. Nice to have tools to be able to flip your stem up or tilt your saddle down or what have you. I regularly end up fine tuning fit during a long ride, so if you drop me in the park, i may just be slowing down to adjust my saddle height! more likely though, its because i'm a slow piece of ****...

Also, gloves and double bar tape...those bare chrome drops don't feel so comfy after 40 miles...

Goal for Spring = full century on a track bike.

+hot chocolate with mini marshmallows on vonnegut. deadeye dick is one of my favorite books.

it's not 50-100 but if you're looking for a 15+ ride think about the minute man bikepath in Boston. It starts from at the Alewife "t" stop and goes to bedford (10 miles/20 round trip) and if you wanna add some miles there are a couple sets of laminated maps of boston area ride that are sold in a bunch of LBS in the boston area, there are like 5-10 rides that start at the end of the minuteman path which could add 10-40miles to the path...

yeah, i ride that trail now and again too. its just a really easy way to work yourself up. my ride was usually around 33 miles round-trip. there are usually a lot of people on it during the day, but it's nice to not have to worry about car traffic and getting stuck on some ****ty strip highway. the elevation change is minimal because you are heading inland, but the return trip always feels faster.

ok, hey mattio. weren't u suppose to go the queens-meet-n-greet or am i confusing u with someone else.
i haven't gotton a hang of the gmap thing. i'm going to see what i can figure out from it. thanks.

i think i said i was gonna, but **** got busy.

gmap-pedometer.com ... use the text box at the top to type your location, and the map will jump to it. click "start recording," and the first place you double-click will be your starting point. then, double click to lay down more points as you go, tracing your route. you can click "undo last point" as many times as you want in order to go back.

as you trace your route by dropping down points (doubleclicking), it will show your mileage. you've got some other options inthe box on the left, too... including the elevation feature, which shows a visualization in blue underneath the map.

it's a pretty neat site.

Gmap-pedometer is kind of slow sometimes, I recommend the Measure tool in Google Earth instead. Also then you can rotate your map sideways and take a cool ass screenshot like so.

http://www.sfu.ca/~ahartlin/sentury.jpg

i'm looking to both. at some point i'd like to ride down to philly for the sake of just hanging out, but i'd also like to be able to have the strength and endurance to do longer rides.

all vonnegut rules. some are just better than others. galapagos was decent but didn't do it for me. i thought slapstick was his worst (which isn't saying much). cat's cradle is my all time favorite book, and the ending of sirens of titan made me feel emotions that no other book has ever done. mother night was also really good.

I'm gonna have to disagree with about SlaughterHouse 5 being masterful, I personally didn't find it to be his best. It was my least favorite out of all the books I've read of his
Mother Night on the other hand is off the hook, though.

I have a friend who owns a bike shop in RI (Castors) and he just completed a group ride across the states: Pacific coast to Atlantic, 26 days in a row. Everyone was on road bikes except for one guy on a fixed gear. I obviously wasn't there for any part of it but his comment about the guy on the fixie (sorry, I don't have his name at the moment), was something along the lines of - at the end of the day we were all beat, but he looked he rode every mile twice.

how did they get from the west to the east coast? did they just get on like I-20 and take it straight across or use local routes?

Man, I miss that ride. I used to do River Road all the time when I lived in Manhattan. The climb back up to 9W is pretty intense..bombing down it is even more intense. After moving out to LI, just to get to River Road and back home I have to ride 100 miles. I ride out there occasionally.

As everyone has said, long distance is fine so long as you're preped for it. Being in FL, im fortunate enough to have mostly flats where I do my distance rides. My ratio is 50:15 but I'm pretty comfortable with that, even with 32-80 mile rides. Best piece of advice I can offer is to have a comfortable saddle and some sort of food/water.

Know the terrain and install proper gearing. I use my flip flop wheel for long distances and often flip my wheel and turn an easier gear on long sustained climbs.

For when you're in boston- some detailed cue sheets for medium-long training rides are at:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/huca/training_cuesheets.htm

I can email you a couple more, if you're interested.

A fun ride is boston to providence ~45 miles each way- a bunch of folks recently did it along route 1, but if you take washington st, which parallels route 1 most of the way, it's a lot more plesant. Nice thing is that you can ride down in the morning, hang out in providence for the day, and then hop on the commuter rail for the backwards leg, if your legs don't feel up to a 90+ mile day.

Another more scenic ride is up the coast towards gloucester-it's a bit hairy getting out of the city that way, but being able to duck into one of the beaches which dot the coast is pretty cool.

The minuteman trail is ok during off times, but pretty packed after people get off work, or on any nice weekend day.

General tips- for long rides: drink lots of water, and bring food with you.
Take things really easy at the beginning- you'll thank yourself when the end rolls around.
Bring a pump, patch kit, spare tube, map, and multitool. Sucks to be stuck in the middle of nowhere because you got two punctures on one ride, totally lost because you missed a turn, or have to ride home standing up because a bolt on your seat came loose. Not that any of these things have happened to me.

I think this speaks far more to your personal fitness level than it does to how easy it is to do distances on a fixie...