480 kilometers after
Because, after all, cycling is the closest to flying that you can get with your own strength.
This is a rough English translation of what I previously wrote in Italian.
When I think about how I was as a kid, my comment would be: “Not particularly gifted”. I was afraid of almost everything. It took me quite some time to learn how to go on a bike. I feared falling off from it, I fell often and it wasn’t easy for my dad to put me back on it after a fall.
But then I started cycling everywhere. To school, to my basketball practices, grocery shopping for my mum. Like many, I then quit. I motorized myself, I started using public transportation.
When I moved to Milan the thought of cycling here scared me to death.
Two years ago I got a fourth-hand bike in order to conquer, again, after more than 30 years, a cycling fear. I started going around the city of and made of cars.
Last Autumn, after having gained a bit of courage and in order to find additional courage, I bought a new, fancy bike. I’ve come to realize that despite the traffic, the uneven surfaces, the constant tension from pedalling among cars, cycling does make me happy.
And it’s not that utter, absolute joy that most seem to attribute to cycling, for me it a sort of indirect happiness generated by the focus on pedalling and not having to think about everything else, especially in this year where “everything else” doesn’t bring particularly happy thoughts.
Up until this year I never cycled for more than 20 kilometers, my bike runs always strictly essential and functional, never for fun.
At the beginning of this year I went out a few times doing 90, 70 and 60 kilometers trips.
Since I’m not a person with a good relationships with half measures, I spent last week cycling along the French Atlantic coast, from Nantes to Bordeaux, for a total of 480 kilometers.
I don’t think anyone would be interested to a section-by-section, kilometer-by-kilometer, city-by-city kind of breakdown, but I do have a collection of observations.
Limits
I’m a healthy and fit person, fitter than most, but I’ve never done anything remotely close to this tip anyway. I took for granted than in some ways I would’ve reached some kind of limit.
On the fourth consecutive day, the longest, 120 kilometers section went more ore less flawlessy until its midpoint. After that the sudden raise in temperature (+8° from the previous day) and the strong, often opposite, wind took their toll.
I had a glycemic and electrolytic crash, the feeling of not having any fluids in my body, I felt dried. I had to stop at kilometer 90 of 120, drink a few sugary beverages, eating a handful of nuts. The following 30 kilometers have been really unpleasant.
As much as I’m describing a physical limit, the reality is that it was a mental limit: it was my brain ringing a warning bell for the weird situation, I never quite reached a real, complete physical exhaustion.
A couple of days before I had experienced this in a minor form, my brain becoming foggy despite the legs feeling strong. You have to stop and reset the brain. It’s the exact opposite of the saying “The spirit is strong but the body is weak”.
I then took a 2-days break, and I did the longest of the legs —133km— by train.
Now, I would do another trip right away, but with a few adjustments.
Moving up further North. In England, Scotland or Scandinavia. I don’t do well in the heat, I heat up really quickly even in the winter, I sweat a lot and even the mild 22-17°C I found in France wasn’t good enough. This negatively influence the quality of my sleep, which has been poor for the entire trip, surely not putting me in my best conditions.
No more 100+km days. There’s no real reason to push further the 100km mark, road and weather conditions influence the performance quite a lot. It makes more sense to stick to intermediate legs of 70/80km each in order to make up for even temporary adverse conditions. If I can safely say that in optimal conditions (lower temperatures, flat and straight road, no wind) I might be able to do 150km in one day, I know very well know that I will rarely experience such optimal conditions.
Take a break after 3 days. A longer vacation or an overall shorter trip are better than risking a fatigue buildup what will sideline you for more than you planned. I did 350km riding for four consecutive days and I paid for it.
It’s not a race. I grew up playing basketball and I’m used to timed and structured weightlifting workouts. I did and do most of my physical stuff with a performative spirit. There’s no need for that in a biking vacation and yet I always tried to finish my days as soon as possibile (see below) and it’s just plain dumb.
Accommodations change the nature of the trip. I haven’t slept in a tent since I was a kid, I’m a big guy and I move a lot while sleeping so I excluded camping in a tent. Since I had to be at my hotels and bed&breakfasts at give times, I sometimes rushed to be there on time. But, given the great number of camping sites along the road, stopping by with a tent would’ve given me a lot more flexibility and time to take each day a bit more easy than I did. I have to try the tent thing.
Preferences
Despite being way on the heavier side as a cyclist and surely not having the climber physique, I do like up&down and curvy roads and in general when there are frequente variations in scenery and tracks.
I really, really enjoyed riding through the coastal pinewoods despite not having the right bike for it (bonus points: in the woods you ride under the shade). I hated with all my heart the long, straight and flat country roads in the middle of corn and sunflower field — the perception of time getting extremely dilated by the monotony of the road.
It’s not surprising that the only time I fell of the bike wasn’t while riding through a particular difficult path or because of a sudden pedestrian crossed the street, no, I fell of my bike because I was distracted, being bored from the flatness and straightness of the road.
And…I will never ever wear anything else than merino wool clothes ever.
Compensations
As I said, my bike is a city bike and my no means a bike touring one. Despite all the roads I went through were in optimal conditions and absolutely rideable with a normal bike, my body definitely compensated the lightness of the frame, the lack of stability and the sub-optimal points of contact for my hands and my ass.
Next time: a butterfly handlebar and a better saddle are absolutely in order. Or I might borrow a real touring bike.
And…I for sure will get real sunglassess with polarized lenses because at some point even my eyelids were hurting.
Archetypes
It was a joy to see so many different cyclists of every shape and form, as this is clearly a country that take cycling seriously.
Despite the many people I encountered, a few archetypical characters emerged.
First of all: you, bikepacking cyclist with you bags and riding for hundreds of kilometers, you will be the slowest one. You will be slower than road cyclist with their ultra-light bikes and speed gears. You will be slower that retirees on their electric bikes. You will be slower than kids dashing towards the beach.
Entire families embarking in shorter or longer bike trips allowed me to observe a specifica patterns in how people show up on the cycling lanes.
A great classic
The Dad, with expensive bike, suit and accessories, as if he was ready to take on the Tour De France
The Mum, with all the pink and fluorescent clothing and the most-improbable colored bike she was able to find
The adolescent or pre-adolescent kid, not only what they wore but simply their pedalling rhythm was telling of a clear “I wanna be somewhere else”
Many years ago Steve Jobs described computers as bicycles for the mind, the idea of tools able to extend our abilities.
The metaphor came from a study comparing the motion efficiency in terms of energy expenditure, relative to the weight, of animals, humans and vehicles.
This means that a human being on a bike can move around for longer and with less effort than any animal or motorized vehicle. A human on a bike, even without training, can beat any professional ultra-marathoner.
But bicycles don’t only amplify our movement capacity. They amplify also our observation ability, our ability of remembering where we have been an when.
Traveling by bike is a sort of middle ground between the slowness and heavy limits of hiking and the anonymous and quick traveling by car, train and airplane.
You can see much more, in relatively less time and remember details for longer, places you want to go back to, as well as places that will be only a footnote.
You get to keep everything that gets lost when our way of traveling is black-boxed, a mere point of departure and point of arrival, with nothing in between.
Not once I felt I was missing something. Everything you need can stay on a bike and this made me thinking, again, at how much “too much” we bring along in our lives, when you could do with less, way less, and occasionally borrow the rest.
Traveling by bike is at the same time an exercise in material minimalism and experiential maximalism.