First of all, if you should need a reason to join the legions of us hooked on cycling, let me quickly roll out the positive impacts cycling has on our health, our planet, and our travel experiences.
Health Benefits
- Gives you a great aerobic, cardiovascular workout.
- Uses all major muscles, especially glutes, hamstrings, quads and calves.
- Improves (without stressing) joints, slows down the development of arthritis.
- Improves bone density.
- Decreases body fat levels.
- Boosts mental well-being.
- Improves immune system, cuts risk of developing major illnesses such as heart disease and cancer.
- Boosts brain power (due to increased circulation, blood flow).
- Reduces signs of aging (increased circulation refreshes skin cells).
- Increases longevity by an average of 5 years.
Environmental & Economic Benefits
- Cuts carbon emissions and pollution.
- Cuts noise pollution.
- Uses less resources and toxic substances to make, and to operate.
- Less impact on roads, animals (roadkill) and cities.
- More economic than cars (no insurance, no fuel, no parking costs, low maintenance).
Travel Benefits
- Low impact on the countries you pedal through.
- Offers you flexibility:
- Can expand routes to include bike paths and trails.
- Do not have to rely on public transportation schedules.
- It is a more participatory, interactive form of travel, allowing you to experience the environments and local cultures more directly.
- Affordable transportation option.
And now you want to cycle and travel by bike, right? Long distance tour cycling is completely accessible to anyone who: 1) has a well-maintained road, touring or gravel bike (depending on type of terrain and tour you will be on), 2) has a burning desire to ‘slow travel’ in a certain area of the world, 3) has a reasonable degree of fitness or desire to improve their fitness, and 4) a capacity to endure occasional spells of exhaustion, hardship and discomfort.
I equate cycling to hard, but rewarding work. You may have to self-propel yourself down the road for up to 8 hours a day, but the experiences you will have and the sense of accomplishment earned will make it more than worthwhile. Self-discovery – a big part of travelling – is dialed up a few notches when you do it by bike! A conversation-starter, a confidence-builder, a way to preserve both yours and our planet’s health – what’s there not to like? Here’s some tips to getting to that point where you’ll be spinning effortlessly across entire countries!
Build up the Frequency and Distance of Rides
I started cycling by riding to work – in downtown Toronto (yes, it was a bit saner back then!), and then in Victoria. Both were short rides – about 10 kms return – but I would try to do the ride every day. When I moved to Powell River, that commute became 36 kms a day, every day (frequently in the rain!), for the six years I worked there. That’s about 50,000 kilometres – 10,000 kms more than the circumference of the earth. And it all started with a 10 km ride a day….
Starting with short commutes to work is an excellent way to begin your foray into cycling. Ride frequency is built into your schedule, and you are also enjoying the benefits of eschewing public transport or costs of running your car. On weekends, expand those rides to 20 kms, then 40, targeting places 
outside the city that you know will make for an enjoyable and, at times, challenging ride. Find the bikepaths, join a cycling club, tag along with your niece – just get out there and ride, and you will find that to get the same ‘buzz’ – i.e. exhilaration and satisfaction – from your ride, you will be sneaking in a few more miles each week.
Your First Tours
Building daily mileage gradually – and loving it – will inevitably lead to the question, “Am I ready for bike touring?” Yes, but within certain parameters. I started with a short tour – a distance of 300 kms (600 kms return), to visit a friend. Given its brevity, and the fact there was accommodation available at the endpoint, I travelled with a minimum of gear – basic bike tools and spare tubes, water bottles and a few snacks, raingear and a change of clothing. I didn’t bother with camping gear, opting for a motel/hotel for any nights on the road. This cuts your load substantially!
In addition to building cardiovascular and muscular strength needed to comfortably pedal 5-6 hours a day, you will need to build your comfort level with sitting on a bike for long periods at a time. Saddle soreness is an inescapable reality of long distance cycling, but with a proper-fitted bike seat (narrower, firmer saddles tend to provide better support to the ‘seat bones’), and training that
incrementally increases your mileage per day, your sit bones will acclimatize to the pressure exerted on them. The trick is to prepare in advance before setting off on your tour. Not doing so will seriously impair the enjoyment of your tour!
Some Specifics for Training
Cyclists’ training manuals will promote, in painstaking detail, a variety of strategies to become a more efficient and effective cyclist (a.k.a. Stronger, faster). These will include ‘sprinting’ or ‘intervals’ (cycling at high cadence speed – i.e., your lower gears – for short durations, followed by equivalent recovery periods), employing air resistance machines and indoor bicycles with a variety of settings to develop your ‘fast-twitch’ muscles (the ones that help you manage the higher gears, and where you need to apply greater torque or power), and hill training. Essentially, all good training programs and processes should have an element of ‘overload’ or difficulty, to build your body up to cope with the stresses and demands you are going to put on it.
My default for overload is hills – lots of them, and regularly. If you live in B.C., you are lucky as you can’t escape hills and you will have plenty of opportunity to do both short, steep climbs (which will require you to use your anaerobic energy system and the fast-twitch muscles good for explosive efforts), and long, 
alpine climbs (which employs slow-twitch fibres and uses less ‘glycogen’ – muscle energy – allowing you to cycle longer at a steady pace). Using the energy-efficient slow-twitch muscle fibres and riding at a higher cadence (i.e., lower gears to reach same desired speed) between 80-100 rpm is always recommended (something that has been gospel since it became a winning strategy for Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France). You want to reserve the fast-twitch muscles for cresting those steep hills, getting out of the way of the trucks that don’t see you, and sprinting for finish lines.
A couple other strategies you could employ to change up, and bring more ‘overload’ into your training is to: 1) ride occasionally with a loaded bike, and 2) enter a road race. Clearly, getting comfortable pedalling a much heavier bike is vital to touring. Begin with lightly packed back panniers, and gradually progress to manoeuvring a fully loaded bike (i.e., with handlebar and rack panniers, as well).
Entering a road race challenges you to ‘up your game’ in order to feel respectably competitive in your class. Riding with more intensity and purpose will add that overload benefit when you are digging for that last bit up strength to scoot past the person inches ahead of you at the finish line. Also, for rural riders, where the opportunity to ride with other riders in your class is limited, races give you the chance to ride in a peloton, and practice group skills (pacelines, handsignals, cornering, braking) that add to your dexterity as a rider.
Using an instrument – like the VDO M5 wireless bike computer – to keep track of your training mileage and effort (in terms of cadence, kph and distance) is a great way to commit to improved
performance on the bike. Adding a heart rate monitor so your bike computer can track the intensity of your effort during exercise will let you know when you are ‘under-achieving’ on the bike. The bike computer is also an invaluable tool on your tour, allowing you to queue up the day’s distance and the mileage cycled.
Cross-Training Options for Long-Distance Cyclists
The wonderful thing about amateur sports training is that you can play with alternatives when the season, or one’s training goals, demand, Any form of cardiovascular exercise will suffice when cycling is not an option: swimming, walking, running,rowing, etc. Weight training, which will target key muscles used in cycling, and ways to strengthen them in the gym, is also highly recommended. Maximizing muscle strength also reduces your risk of injury on or off the bike.
Among the essential strength training exercises for cyclists are: squats, hyperextensions, deadlifts, step-ups, pull-downs, leg press, cable row, barbell bends and knee-ups. On the mat, these exercises also work the upper and lower back, leg (hamstrings and quads) glutes, and abdominals.muscles that push those pedals: lunges (with bicep curls), lying hip bridge, boat pose and Russian twist. For abdominal fortitude, include ‘the plank’ in your daily mat routine.
The key to effective strength training is to be always conscious of good form, engaging the core muscles (and often the glutes), and maximizing muscular involvement. Good to remember this on a bike, too!
Stretches ensure muscles are warmed-up before a ride, and relaxed after one. Choose stretches that target the back, quads, hamstrings, adductors, hips and glutes. My favourite is the ‘happy baby’ yoga stretch which, when maintained for at least 30 seconds, stretches the hamstrings, inner thigh and groin, and also opens up the hips, shoulders and chest.
Diet and Nutrition for Long Distance Riders
A cyclist’s diet arms them with the calories – in the form of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins – needed to operate their aerobic energy system. At first you will find that this system needs to be topped every 2/3 hours with a protein-rich snack, but as you become fitter, your body will also switch to fat-burning as an alternative fuel for energy. Consuming large quantities of food is counter-productive for a cyclist however; weight and body fat should be kept to a minimum in order to maintain efficiency as a cyclist. Mind these words of wisdom: “A pound of weight saved from your body is worth far more than any weight you can save off your bike.”
A cyclist needs a diet rich in carbohydrates (60%), protein (18%), and healthy fat (22%), and replenished by eating or drinking appropriate carbohydrate-rich food or drinks when glycogen stores are depleted (2-4 hours). Foods such as cereals, bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, peas, lentils, fruit (fresh, dried, tinned, juiced or in smoothies), jam, honey, and sports products (in drink, bar or gel form), will maintain a cyclist’s energy and muscle tone. In a well-conditioned body, fats will be burned before vital gylocen stories, enabling the rider to continue longer before ‘hitting the wall’.
I hope my journey as a cyclist, and ways in which I have deepened my commitment and enjoyment of riding, will help you expand your own visions, and ability as a cyclist. Even if you do not consider
yourself an athlete (I never did!), realizing the commuting and recreational benefits of cycling, and gradually adopting routine use of a pedal-bike, will build up the endurance muscles and mentality essential to bike touring. It’s a sport, and a world, available to us all!