How to ride a bicycle for long distances
Enjoyable experience and tips from the owner of bike-n-ride.com - the best bike rental in Portugal.
A bicycle is a triple-purpose vehicle. It can be a piece of sports equipment, and here, this issue is beyond my competence and interests. If you are involved in cycling, your coach and sports medicine doctor will tell you everything you need better than me, and this article will be insufficient and, perhaps, will seem like nonsense to you. I believe that sport is harmful, although physical education is valuable. If most athletes look healthy, it is not because they are athletes. You need to be an influential person to have the strength for sport. And this does not mean that sport brings health. After all, if a smoker is not yet sick, you will not claim that smoking leads to health, will you? Sport is achieving the best possible result among many trained people, which means you must strain all your capabilities and reserves, often to the detriment of health. A bicycle can also be a means of entertainment. So, if you ride around your house once a week, you will enjoy it, but you do not need this article. The bicycle is compact and light. Therefore, you can ride it along forest paths and, having reached the thickets or swamp, strain a little, pick it up, and carry it. It is possible. It would seem that you can ride through the forest on a motorcycle, but you won’t be able to take it through the swamp in your hands, a couple of hundred kilos, however. Therefore, a bicycle will allow you to reach places on wheels other transport cannot reach.
The bicycle's compactness allows it to be inserted into many types of conventional transport, such as intercity buses, trains, and planes. Thus, it will enable you to easily combine transport with the existing infrastructure.
A bicycle is relatively cheap. Yes, a good (I mean without obvious defects) bicycle with minimal performance and whistles costs a significant amount (approximately a TV), but you will never buy a motorcycle or a car for the same amount.
You have to pay for any transport. Public transport is costly; a car and a motorcycle require gasoline and spare parts, and they must still be taken somewhere or carried with you. And being a complex device, a car or any self-propelled vehicle often requires repairs (motorists know this). A bicycle that is used on hikes and not kept at home, blowing off dust particles, in my opinion, requires maintenance of 30 euros per year, and moving on it costs nothing - you only have to pay for your regular food.
I will not hide that I dreamed of traveling (going on hikes) since school, but I considered it impudence to travel and systematically have fun with my parents' money. At the institute, a scholarship appeared, and a couple of trips a month on the train to Lisbon became enough, but you understand what kind of money that was. In 1987, my grandfather gave me my first bicycle; my dad taught me to ride it in the following years. It was a "window to hikes" because you don't have to pay for it, and it significantly expanded the range of accessible points about commuter train stations.
The financial aspect of travel is always important, so for many, a bicycle, which is decently priced but still within the realm of reality, can become the only opportunity that would be foolish not to use.
Let's say you've decided to go hiking somewhere. Many people can set aside a week for a hike once a year, and almost everyone can spend two days off every week, but time is always limited, and you want to go oh so far.
So, we solve the problem: we're going to some wilderness near Sintra or Cascais, we have 7 days, we have a bicycle, but no transport goes directly to this wilderness. Therefore, we developed only such a route to complete the task by bicycle in a limited time. And for this, we must ride 100-150 km daily. There are roads, it seems. Therefore, it becomes evident that for a bicycle to be helpful as a means of transport (and there is no other means of transport where we want to go), we must be able to ride 100-200 km a day and not die. This article is about this.
Let's start with the initial provisions. The main thing is not to die, to enjoy the trip, and not to feel like a loader every day at the end of a two-shift job. Also, let's assume you are a young or middle-aged person, not a child or an old man. I note this because such loads can be harmful or even fatal for these categories of people. Remember this.
You must also be sure that you do not have any diseases that can cost you your life or the rest of your health during such a vacation. It's easy for me because I have a medical education and can assess my health at any moment (like, I know the symptoms and what they can mean). If you lack such knowledge, consult your doctor in advance. Therefore, let the doctor first tell you the list of pathologies found in you, then ask him about what this may be fraught with. For example, if you are told that you have gastritis and you need to stick to a special diet, then you will already reasonably understand that long journeys are not quite suitable for you. After receiving a detailed consultation, tell them what kind of exercise you will do, and now the doctor can give a sensible, well-founded recommendation. Here, I am not calling on anyone not to trust doctors. Doctors should be trusted, but doctors are ordinary people with fears, needs, and habits. These are ordinary people. Who simply knows more about medicine than you? Your task is to behave so that their knowledge and experience serve to safely achieve your goals, not their own. Yes, a doctor understands medicine better than you but does not go hiking or need hiking. Therefore, I urge you to trust people (including doctors), but not unconditionally and in everything, but in what they are more competent than you. And if you have hiking experience, let all doctors without this experience keep quiet and listen to your lecture on using a map and a compass, and when they tell you how to treat your heart, it means it's time for you to keep quiet and listen. I have not said anything illogical here, but it is up to you to decide whether to believe me. Well, after this philosophical digression, let's continue. Yes, also a tiny remark: above, I mentioned that I have a medical education. To avoid misunderstanding, I will say immediately that I will not consult anyone about health over the Internet. Remember: the "doctor" who treats patients without examination, in forums, e-mail, ICQ, and by phone probably signed a contract with a funeral agency and receives a percentage of the funeral. (So spiteful, but at least it's true).
Now, let's move from lyrics to semantic material.
I'll tell you a few facts about human physiology and, based on this, give recommendations on how to travel long distances without dying of fatigue.
The algorithm of action will follow from the facts - you will be able to think through and check my logical constructions. Sometimes, it is enough to think through the order of actions once; then, on this basis, it is convenient to develop your norms and rules (after all, all people are different, and the norms will be yours and not the average person's). The rules developed for yourself can be stupidly followed without thinking anymore - without doing the mental work already done once again. Such a scheme is convenient. Sometimes, I give my rules here for illustration. Please note that sometimes my rules contain the words "should," "must not," "prohibited," and similar directives. Know that if I write "prohibited," then I am the one who is prohibited - this is a personal rule. I don't want to impose my rules on anyone; I just show them as an illustration. And soon, if you want, you will come to your own rules, which will become the best rules for you and no one else.
You know that our working organ is the muscles. Everyone has seen meat. These are contractile fibers, and small vessels penetrate the entire thickness of the organ to carry blood with oxygen and nutrients and remove waste products.
Since the muscles are the working organ, they must be developed and trained so that during the hike, they do not experience excessive loads but give us their working power without fatigue. Only in this way will we get pleasure, not fatigue and pain.
You know, training is the way to develop muscles. This is a gradual increase in load; after each stage, the muscle can do more. And so each time - constantly more and more.
So, plan your training calendar for the year. I will tell you about the one I have used for many years for illustration. Everything will be individual for you, but pay attention to gradually increasing the loads until you reach the desired level.
As soon as the road conditions allow, a 30 km trip around the neighborhood - a bit hard when you're not used to it, but you gradually get into the rhythm. It's not fatal for an ordinary, healthy middle-aged person, right?
After the first stage, we extend the Sunday trip route to 50 km - it's more difficult but not fatal.
The third stage is a couple of trips of about 100 km with an interval of a week. The first hundred is also a bit hard, but not to the point of exhaustion.
So, these three stages fit into 3 weeks or a month (depending on the weather and evening work, 30 km is a couple of hours after work in good weather). Then, about once a month, the hundredths are repeated. When I have already ridden a hundred kilometers in a season, all the other weekend trips, which are usually 50 km with a campfire and a snack, seem wholly trivial and bring pleasure (compare: a sack of potatoes for an old man is an unbearable weight, but for a weightlifter, it is a feather).
By mid-summer, a 200 km trip is made. This is already more difficult, but it is possible if you follow the driving regimen, which will be discussed later. When 200 km are behind you, even a hundred is a piece of cake with this level of training. In this state, after 50 km, you don’t need to rest - just eat well and lie down for 15 minutes - and you are ready for battle.
Such training is needed not for sports and steepness but because when you can ride 200 km a day, regular 50-100 km no longer cause discomfort, and you can only get pleasure from the hike. Those who know can immediately notice that such a schedule does not pretend to be athletic. But we do not need this. We are not athletes but ordinary people who want to go hiking.
A little about the driving regimen.
I will give you some ideas for reflection and facts from physiology that are useful in developing reasonable individual driving schedules.
The heart begins to beat faster when the load on our body increases. Each heartbeat is this: the heart expands, and its cavities fill with blood through the valve. Then it contracts, and the valve through which the filling closes and the other valve (into the aorta) opens. A well-known fact: when the heart rate is more than 120 contractions per minute, the inlet valve does not have time to close when the heart contracts, and the blood is partially expelled back to where it came from. Therefore, the heart will reflexively work faster if it is hard. But its work will become sharply ineffective and even harder at a frequency of more than 120 contractions per minute. The heart reflexively accelerates from this, but it only gets worse - a vicious circle. And the person begins to bend over from overload. Therefore, it is essential to monitor the pulse. If the pulse is more than 125 per minute (it is convenient to count more than 10-11 in 5 seconds), then the limit has been reached, and it is impossible to go further! Therefore, if the riding speed is closer to high, you must brake once every 15 minutes and count your pulse for at least 5 seconds (accuracy is not necessary; the order of magnitude is essential). Typically, any muscle contracts and relaxes, and these processes should alternate. The surrounding contracted fibers compress all the vessels in a contracted muscle. Only in a relaxed muscle are the vessels open, and blood flows through them with oxygen and nutrients and carries away the waste products of work. A compressed muscle cannot feed itself, but it spends energy. Find something heavy at home and try to lift it with one hand. It is unlikely to work, but you will feel aches and pain in the tense muscle in a minute. This is it starving and poisoned by the products of its vital activity. I mean that static loads (when the muscles are contracted under load and can no longer contract) are harmful and ineffective since they strangle our muscles. And they are precisely when pedaling in high gears when pressing the pedals very hard. Conclusion - it is dangerous.
Low gears and frequent light pedaling are also harmful. Legs have weight, and when pedaling like this, you accelerate them in space and then brake as if in emptiness with your efforts. Therefore, a person rapes himself with the weight of his legs. Experiment at home: lie down on your back and spin the "bicycle" with your legs in the air at a high frequency. I don't think anyone can do this for long. Therefore, on a long hike, you can overexert yourself if you ride faster than your norm (determined by your pulse) or pedal while riding downhill (which leads to frequent pedaling almost idle).
A practical recommendation is as follows. First, you need to determine your speed in working conditions by your pulse. So, for me, it is 25 km/h on a flat road without an incline and wind. Measuring your pulse often is painful. But now there is always a speed meter on a bicycle, right? That's why I did it like this:
• when I went on the road, I drove in the 23-25 mode. That is, without reason, it is forbidden to lower the speed below or above this limit,
• there is a headwind or a little fatigue - the speed mode is 21-23,
• there is a slight climb - we set the speed mode to 18-21,
• if I suddenly go downhill and the speed remains above the upper limit - I put my feet on the pedals and do not pedal - rest. It is forbidden to pedal downhill,
• if I suddenly go uphill, the speeds go to hell, but I set the gears so that the load on the legs is equal to the usual one, no more.
Finally, the last point. In any business, the worst thing is fatigue. It is easier to prevent than to cure. That's why I drive by the clock. I always ride 55 minutes per hour. For the remaining 5 minutes, I stand; it is better to sit on my butt - let the muscles relax and get nourishment from fresh blood. With this regime, I rest for five minutes even before I get noticeably tired.
All the above recommendations are important, but eating and drinking correctly on a bike trip is also essential.
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