PH wrote: 28 Feb 2025, 7:49pm
You've given no indication of the timescale for the trip...
OP said 4 weeks...
Moogiebug wrote: 28 Feb 2025, 3:18pm
I’m mainly struggling with non-cyclers being really negative about it and it’s making me anxious. I KNOW it’s a huge thing to do, but I desperately want to do it.
I've worked on several LEJOG guided / supported rides and a few other similar sort of tours, usually operating on the basis of 100-ish miles a day. Some people turn up having done hundreds if not thousands of miles in prep and training. Some have literally never ridden 100 miles in a day before and they turn up on day 1 to ride their first ever century...followed by 8 more century rides.
A lot of the people who sign up to tours like that are doing so for charity, sometimes as a bit of a dare or they've signed on in a drunken haze or whatever but they push through and persevere. The most difficult aspect is actually the logistics - what to take, what to carry, what to wear, how to pack, charging stuff in the evening, recovery and so on. The riding is actually the easy (easier...) bit. Get on bike, pedal. That's pretty simple.
Sorting out kit in the evening, packing for the next day, cleaning the bike, drying wet kit. That's the pain in the @rse bit which no-one ever "trains" for.
And people have done it on all sorts of bikes, it doesn't need to be anything flash or expensive. Main thing is it needs to be comfy. Everything else sort of takes care of itself (and this is another thing we see all the time, people fretting about "is my bike good enough?").
Does it work? Is it comfy?
So long as the answer to both of those is "yes", you're half way there. Most of it is mental. That's especially true over the course of a month where you're pretty much guaranteed to face at least some adverse weather. On a week long tour you can pick a decent looking week and go for it - on a month long tour, there's going to be some days where you'll get wet so you need the mental strength to manage things like that.
Actually the most inspirational people I find on those sorts of events I've worked on have been the folk who are way outside their comfort zone, who have had to lose 20lb to even start training properly, who have signed up because of some family trauma or because they've survived cancer. Any half decent club cyclist can smash out 100 miles in 6-7hrs, comfy on their carbon bike with electronic gears.
The impressive people are the ones who push through every day, knowing they're doing it to raise money for a good cause, trying their hardest.
Besides, 4 weeks is a leisure ride, you can take a few days off here and there, see the sights, take the scenic route... Even if you only ride 20 of the 30 days in a month, that's only 50 miles a day average and even non-trained cyclists can manage that!
Good luck! And remember to look at the scenery, not just down at a cycle computer!
