The Distance Ladder: Really Long Single Rides

A practical guide for stretching to some truly crazy single ride distances. If you think spending 24 hours straight on your bike sounds fun, you need to keep reading.

I don’t want to claim to be anything I’m not, so I should say up front that this is the part of the Distance Ladder that’s newest to me. I came to long distance riding from bikepacking and bike touring. Riding 100, even 150km was fun in part because then I’d roll up to camp and kick back for a while.

As I’ve gotten into racing, that’s changed. A 250km per day target at the 2022 Mishigami Challenge ballooned into a 300km per day average when left without a reason to stop at night and every reason to ride more. Dipping a toe into shorter ultras led me to explore riding through the night.

Of course, you don’t have to be racing to target distances that some might consider extreme. There’s an entire discipline of cycling - randonneuring - that’s explicitly devoted to challenging yourself to go further.

So as much as this part of the Distance Ladder will be informed by my own experience, I’ve also enlisted the help of some experienced randonneurs to offer their advice, which you’ll find peppered in through this newsletter.

But let’s back up a little. What is this part of the Distance Ladder?

Essentially, it’s about seeing how far you can get on a single ride. Maybe there’s a little sleep involved, maybe (probably) not, but climbing these rungs is about pushing further and further in a single day, or at least without a defined break between “yesterday’s ride” and “today’s ride.” It’s about the rides that are just one big push.

• First Rung: 300km

• Second Rung: 400km

• Third Rung: 600km

• Fourth Rung: The Great Beyond

It’s maybe the most straightforward ladder yet, and honestly most of the skillset is the same.

Keep. Pedaling. Your. Damn. Bike.

Still, there are some nuances to reaching each of these rungs, so let’s get into it.

First Rung: 300km

Wait, haven’t we skipped a step? The first Distance Ladder left off at a Century ride. This is nearly twice that distance.

Well…only kind of.

If you’ve become comfortable at the 160km (100mi) distance and are among the people (like me) who start looking for more instead of capping out at that point, chances are you’re going to reach 200km without a problem. And if you’re still looking to go further, the fake law of nice round numbers is likely to propel you to the 250km/150mi threshold.

All of that is decidedly further than 160km, but it’s not ‘til about 300km that it starts really feeling different.

At this distance, you really will be on your bike all day long in a pretty literal sense. But it’s also just short enough that you can move pretty inefficiently towards that 300km goal, by which I mean there’s enough time to make plenty of stops along the way and still get to bed on time. So if you’ve gotten up to and beyond an Imperial Century by stopping every 80km for a meal and a resupply, you can probably still do that and bag a 300km ride.

It’s sort of impossibly long when you think about the entirety of riding 300km in a day, but tantalizingly achievable by riding at a normal pace for a single day.

How Do You Eat an Elephant? One Bite At a Time.

Which brings me to my first piece of borrowed advice, courtesy of Michael Geuss.

Don't start the ride thinking of the entire distance. Ride your planned pace and let your mind focus on the immediate need of that first planned stop…breaking up the ride into parts makes the difference.

(Also thanks to Phil Fox for providing the same advice in the form of the above section headline.)

For me, the extremely quirky version of this has been breaking my long rides into “commutes.” Since living in Chicago, my roughly twice a week commute to my office has been 60km each way. (It’s long, but it’s also how I fit most of my base endurance miles into my schedule while working full time.) 60, 120, 180km - these distances can mess with your head. But when I think about one, two, three commutes, that feels small. I do two commutes a day all the time, and that’s with a big long workday in between. Three commutes without the work interruption can’t possibly be that bad.

Make Your Stops Multi-Purpose

Having to make a lot of stops kills motivation and progress. Even if the stops are long, it’s best to try to space them out.

Let’s take a practical example. I mentioned above that if you’ve been used to taking a meal break every few hours, you should continue doing that for your first 300km ride. Not only will that help you stay on top of your nutrition, but it’ll be a good measure for your stops. If you’re carrying two large bottles (which I recommend) then they’re probably going to last you somewhere in the 70-110km range, depending on conditions. That means that by the time you’re stopping to eat, your bottles will be close to empty, too. At the same stop, you can and should go to the bathroom and replenish snacks, if needed.

Even if you’re taking a 30 minute rest while you eat and your stop balloons out to close to an hour, that’s better than five minutes here, ten minutes there. It’ll allow you to keep momentum through the ride. And bonus! It gives you a handy way to break up the distance. You’ll be stopping two, maybe three times, meaning “each ride” is 70-100km. You can ride that far!

Hydrate. Your Life Depends On It.

I was pretty hesitant to give a stated distance that you can make it on two large bottles because it varies so much person to person and is extremely condition dependent. So let’s say this very loudly.

EXTRA STOPS ARE WORTH IT TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH LIQUIDS.

You will not finish a long ride if you don’t hydrate, just like you will not finish a long ride if you don’t eat. Plan ahead. Know where you have options to refill, and where there won’t be anything. Take extra bottles or a hydration vest if you need to - there are plenty of ways to get an extra bottle on your bike even if your frame is full. A bottle in a handlebar feed bag makes sure one is close at hand. Fork cages or a seat-mounted triathlon-style bottle cage can be good ways to carry extra water when you need to.

And if you really get in a pinch, you can follow this advice from Sarah Rice:

If you are hot and nauseated and need salt and liquids, drink a can of Campbell’s soup.

Take Care of Your Bum

In my experience (and it will vary), hand pain is manageable; your handlebars have multiple positions (that you should avail yourself of). Foot numbness is manageable; they’re constantly moving anyways. It’s not to say that either of these are pleasant, but (again, in my experience) they’re unlikely to stop you.

Saddle sores will make you hate your bike.

I like a treatment of chamois cream every 100km.

This comes from Jay Readey, and I can personally attest that this is good advice.

A good bike fit will cure the vast majority of saddle issues, but particularly over long distances, chamois cream can help prevent that last bit of problem chafing.

Wearing the same bibs for 24+ hours isn't the end of the world but you have to wash the salt off your butt and bibs or they will chafe. Re-apply cream after washing the salt.

Sarah Rice offers this addition, and it is similarly well tested and solid advice.

Saddle sores will ruin a trip and keep you off a bike for weeks at a time. Do the important little things to prevent them. It’s worth the few extra minutes you’ll spend.

Second Rung: 400km

At this distance and beyond, you’re going to be fighting both your environment and - more impactfully - your body in some new ways. You’re absolutely going to go into the night, which means thinking more about your lights. You’re going to be on your bike for upwards of 16 hours, unless you are a very, very fast cyclist. But at this and longer distances, being fast is a diminishing return. In fact…

Ride Within Yourself

The long distance game is NOT about coming out of the chute hot. Don't blow yourself up in the first hour redlining to keep a pace you cannot sustain.

That’s from Phil Fox, and it couldn’t be more true.

In a four hour race, you can torch your legs in the first hour and hope to hold on to the end. When you’re on your bike for +/-20 hours, those efforts at or above threshold WILL come back to bite you.

There’s a phrase that I have a love/hate relationship with. Love, because it’s right. Hate, because it’s sort of grammatical nonsense.

“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

Over extremely long distances, you have to try to be as smooth as possible, as consistent as possible. “Spiky” efforts of high intensity followed by rest are much harder to sustain or recover from than a constant lower energy effort. Time is gained and lost as much in the stops as the riding over ultradistance, so don’t ride so hard that you have to stop to recover. (Because you won’t recover.)

On the flipside, don’t get scared off by temporary discomfort, even temporary exhaustion. You’re going to go through a lot of high points and a lot of low points when riding 400km. As Mark Harrison puts it:

Most physical issues are temporary in nature and you can ride through it. Most mechanicals can be overcome.

Mentally and physically, be as calm as you can. This is a big undertaking, and you’ll never benefit from losing your head.

Keep Riding Whenever You Can

One of the biggest differences between a 300km ride and one that’s 400km or longer is that you start losing the time to take breaks. Or at least, to take breaks in the same way.

It is axiomatic that you don’t get anywhere while standing still. Or said differently, going slow is better than not going at all.

Do all your eating and drinking while on the move, and master the art of access from bags, pockets or bottles.

This comes from Jay Readey, and the rationale is pretty simple. If you’re riding your bike literally all day (or beyond), there is no real stop-and-rest until the ride is over. Could you finish a 400km ride stopping every 80ish kilometers for a half-hour break and a meal? Yes. But logistical problems start to rear their head. Are you going to be able to find a 24 hour restaurant or gas station? Do you feel safer stopped or moving? Are you going to be able to motivate yourself to move again?

With the number of stops you pretty much have to take for a 400km or longer ride, huge time differences emerge from stopping for 5-10 minutes just to grab some supplies versus stopping for 20, 30, 60 minutes to take a break. It literally adds hours to your ride, and it doesn’t really save your legs because you’re going to be pedaling for so many hours anyways.

Instead, practice moving more quickly through your stops. On shorter rides, practice going the full distance without stops. Practice eating and drinking while riding. Practice carrying extra food so you know what pockets or bags you need.

This has been one of the hardest things for me to learn and master because I really enjoy the places you see along the way on a long bike trip. But what works on multiple days of touring doesn’t necessarily work when trying to hammer out one epic ride. It’s a different skill set, despite the overlaps.

Third Rung: 600km

I have never done a 600km ride. I can’t tell you what that feels like, or what you have to go through to do it.

But in the next few months, I intend to find out. So let’s let my training, plus the advice of some experienced randonneurs, guide your way.

Your Ride Starts Well Before Your Ride

This is true at “shorter” long distances, too, but becomes particularly relevant when planning a ride that’s going to take more than 24 hours to complete.

So while it might seem obvious, listen to Chuck Judy.

Bank sleep and rest before the ride.

People perform better when they’re well-rested. It’s just true. Don’t be a dummy and stay up late all week before you try to do something a little crazy like a 600km ride.

But maybe do a little more than that. Actively prepare your body. One way to do that: reduce or eliminate (says Phil Fox) your caffeine intake.

Before a big ride… cut the caffeine out cold turkey. That way when you need it… it works.

This is hard for a lot of people, myself included. I like the ritual of a cup of coffee in the morning. I don’t consider myself dependent on caffeine to be a “real person,” but I certainly don’t shy away from it, either.

We’ll get back to caffeine in a moment, but for the moment let’s leave things at this: Give your body what it needs ahead of time so that it will serve you well.

Oh also: that includes properly hydrating (as in, drink more water than you normally do, probably) for at least several days before your ride. As Josh Haley puts it:

Hydrate and sleep well leading up to the ride. There is nothing a single night of sleep is going to do that can undo a week of bad sleep and dehydration.

Let The Sun Shine

Some people love riding their bikes at night. While I think of myself as pretty solar powered, I’ll admit there’s a certain majesty to it. Especially on a clear night well away from light pollution, you can find some spectacular views.

But most people sleep at night. You’re used to sleeping at night. However, when riding 600km you aren’t going to get a full night’s sleep. You might not sleep at all. And before that sun comes up the next morning, things might start to feel a little grim. So listen to Jay Readey.

If you can make it through one complete night, it’s possible to stay awake during the day the second day.

I don’t know that I have much to add to that, not having tried to stay up the full next day before myself. But I can say that the principle holds true in my experience. Energy comes with the sun, and you shouldn’t underestimate it. Remember, most physical issues are temporary. That includes feeling tired in any particular moment.

But If You Must Sleep…

You’ll get some different answers to the question, “Should I sleep?” when tackling a ride of this distance. In some sense, you can’t sleep too much, or else it just becomes rides on consecutive days. You’ll have to decide for yourself where that particular line lies.

But as to the question “Should I sleep?” the answer is that you should stay safe. Anyone who’s been riding ultra distances for any period of time will have stories about theirself or others falling asleep on the bike. You do not want to do this. Obviously, you will crash.

So instead, consider a cat nap.

I love the research about the power of a complete sleep cycle. For most of us it’s 90 minutes, but it ranges 60-120 minutes…The navy seals or special forces did a research study into the optimal length of a short nap under circumstances of sleep deprivation. Their conclusion: 26 minutes. I set an alarm for 28 and then close my eyes.

Thanks once again to Jay Readey for the insight, though he was echoed by a number of randonneurs I asked for advice. Many randonneurs take emergency blankets with them on long rides like this just in case they need to nap on a park bench or even the side of the road. Alternatively…

The [post office] lobbies are open all night through most of the country, temperature controlled (helpful in both cold and heat).

The quote is again Jay’s, although he attributes the advice to Mark Harrison.

But what if you really, really don’t want to sleep.

Caffeine.

Yes, it’s as simple as that. Cokes, coffees, chocolate covered espresso beans. (That last one’s hard to find at a gas station but is a favorite of mine. Kills two birds with one stone. Lots of gels or energy chews will have a bit of caffeine in them, too. To go back to Phil’s advice earlier, this is why you go off of caffeine, so it works extra hard for you in small, controlled amounts.

Another option that, to be honest, terrifies me, but many people swear by is caffeine pills. Here’s Sarah Rice.

[I use] timed-release capsules that deliver the equivalent of 1 cup of coffee over 4 hours.

Fourth Rung: The Great Beyond

If you’re not crazy (if I’m not crazy) for trying to ride 600km in a single go, you (I) certainly are for trying to go much further than that. From a time perspective, could you theoretically cover 700 even 800 kilometers before going into a second night? Yeah. Are there people who go boldly/foolhardily into that second night? Sure.

I don’t know if there’s advice to give about trying to do that, though. At that point, you’re in a group so small you might just be on your own. Doubtless, everything we’ve touched on through this entire little series is relevant: plan, fuel, practice, go smoothly, keep pedaling. But is there a secret to doing it? I don’t know. I’m doubtful.

This is the limit that I see right now. But I haven’t yet achieved the rung before it. At nearly every other point on my journey through these distance ladders, the next step has seemed like the hardest thing imaginable. And then I did it, and I started imagining the next thing.

So maybe I shouldn’t mentally limit myself. Maybe I should just pedal and see where it is I end up.