What is the farthest bike ride you've taken?

26 miles – during a triathlon in college. It was over roads in rural Minnesota. Very tough for me, even though I’d done a bit of training.

It was a 500 mile one. But I was riding a bike that went 5 million miles an hour so it isn’t last very long

I used to ride an 18 mile loop on the weekends.

Okay. All kidding aside. Every year I do a program called ride Idaho. It’s a week long and we ride around Idaho. This year it will be 339 miles. It takes a lot of conditioning but it is great fun!

21 miles, we went to a local campground, and spent the night.

8 miles around an island

A friend and I rode across England, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy many years ago, a total of about 4000 miles.

We mostly slept in whatever sheep pasture, horse paddock, orchard, city park, cemetery or forest preserve we could find around dusk. A few people took pity on us and let us sleep in a barn or garage, and we scored a couple of $7 hotels here and there.

The bikes held up well, but we went through a few weeks of multiple flats per day because of an incompatibility between some rims we bought in France and the Spanish inner tubes. Maddening. We also wore out many tires and a few chains.

As for training, that was England.

Did a 200 mile ride 5 or 6 times. A yearly event. Regularly did 100 miles a week.

I’m a lightweight. A pal and I rode from Lake Park in Milwaukee to St. Francis and back when I was 16 one day just to see if we could. That would’ve been about 20 miles total – if we hadn’t called her mom to pick us up in a parking lot after only a couple of miles on the way back.

My legs were noodles for the next week.

@aprilsimnel You have to build up to longer rides. Have ridden several times with newbies who were going gang busters until they realized we had turn around sometime and return over the same distance.

@Cardinal – Well, I know that now! :D

Hmmmm, I went on a Berlin City Bike Tour and it took us about four hours

I used to ride a lot when I lived on Kos (a Greek island with a fairly flat northern coast). I’d do 7km to visit my girlfriend at some point, and I’ve done 15km once (but I also did that on foot a couple of times). I don’t think I’ve done more. Too hot.

100 miles or so. Honestly after about the first 50 miles as long as you’re resting on a regular basis it’s pretty much the same. I road primarily on trails, and we camped as we went. It rained about half the time we were out there, so it was a little muddy and a little uncomfortable at times since you can’t exactly ride a bike in a poncho. A couple of us had colds at the end. We prepared by gradually taking longer and longer bike trips and doing as much leg and upper body exercising as possible so that we could build up strength and stamina. We made sure to take bike trips on a daily basis, though one day we usually just kept the trips short and slow so we could rest our muscles.