Cycling 100 kms in a day: How hard could it be?

I like endurance type activities, trekking, long distance motorcycle rides etc. I’ve done the 1000+ km Mumbai – Bangalore ride multiple times, 16-18 hours in the saddle. I enjoy the horror of being alone with my thoughts.

I’ve been living in Germany for about a year now, in a small-ish city near Berlin called Magdeburg. The overall experience of immigrating to Germany has been an absolute nightmare, but that’s a story for another day. I’ve been trying to make the best of my time here, by cycling as much as humanly possible.

With the Autobahns right next to me, the logical thing to do would be to get a license and start driving or riding bikes here, but getting a license in Germany is very expensive, and I can’t justify the cost at this moment. I don’t care for cars, and I rode motorcycles in India because that’s the most fun way to travel. In Europe, cycling is better.

I bought a Triban RC500 from Decathlon a few months back, the damn thing cost about 60,000 INR, which is more than what I paid for my Bajaj Pulsar 150 in 2007. Cycling is not a cheap hobby, how the hell can a 10 kg hunk of Aluminum be more expensive than a 150 kg precision machine of steel? But that’s also a subject for another time.

I love cycling, it takes you to places where automobiles can’t go. It’s almost like a video game sometimes, exploring the open world, finding new places to visit on the map. I’ve been cycling since I was a kid, being born into one of those rare small towns in India where you can cycle to school without dying immediately.

When I was in the UK I experimented with mountain bikes, and it was a lot of fun. I bought a road bike in Germany simply because I had never experienced them before, and they are fantastic, though uncomfortable. I’ve been building up my endurance slowly, consistently riding farther and longer.

I’m 35, and in no mood to push myself too hard, so my rides mostly involve getting to a junction and taking the path I haven’t taken before, hitting dead ends in the process, and just chilling out while looking at the pretty clouds.

There are many cycling groups here, and I don’t ride with any of them on purpose. Most of them seem to prefer riding on roads, and I do not. Cycling paths in the middle of nowhere are so much more fun, I feel too self conscious on the roads, always feel like I’m blocking people in cars from living their life.

The first time I went out on a long-ish ride on the RC500, I did 27 kms and nearly fainted. I think it was a combination of looking down at the ground because I couldn’t hold my neck up, and the raging pain everywhere in my hands and behind. As I kept riding the right muscles got stronger I guess, so I kept riding some more.

The first 50 km ride felt like nothing, I could’ve easily gone for an hour more. The first 70 km ride was harder, I was really tired by the end of it. On the next ride I thought I’ll cross 100 kms, but at the 80 km mark I was just destroyed, and the last 10 kms to home became absolute hell, especially when it started raining and the cold water hit my nether regions, and I realized I was out of water and extremely thirsty. At least I knew that I could ride 90 kms without dying, even though it was close.

Yesterday I finally completed my first 100 km ride. It was brutal. The first 60 kms were great, I really enjoyed the scenery, explored a new area I’d never been to, but the moment I turned back I realized why the first half was so nice, I was riding with the wind. Now the next 50 odd kms will be pushing against it, almost like I had gone downhill all this time and now had to cycle back up.

When you drive a car you don’t need to worry about the weather, terrain, or wind. When you ride a motorcycle you need to worry about the weather. On a cycle, you need to become an old timey sailor and worry about weather, wind speed, wind direction, which cities are cursed, and the phases of the moon. It’s crazy how much wind affects your stamina, and being in Europe means it’s always windy.

You can actually see the massive difference in my speed in this graph from Strava, the point where my speed just completely falls off the cliff about halfway is where I turned back. The thing about wind is that there’s nothing you can do about it, just head down and keep pedaling, looking directly near your feet helps because the ground rushing by makes you feel faster. I did that, but the progress was painfully slow.

I had learned enough from my previous rides to keep myself hydrated and well fed, so at least my legs didn’t completely give up, but around the 80 km mark the ride became an exercise in pain management. I’d try to get some blood into my numb hands only for my bottom to become red in pain, trying to fix the bottom pain caused my neck to be on fire and my feet to get numb. It was bad.

Some 5 kms from home a large group of what looked like professional cyclists overtook me. I had heard that it’s easier to follow people than to ride on your own, they punch a hole in the air so you don’t have to work so hard. I attempted to keep up with them to use their slipstream, but of course what happened was that they were professional cyclists and hence very quick, and I pushed myself way beyond my comfort zone just to keep up with them. Not that I was actually able to keep up with them, they kept drifting farther and farther away as I pushed more and more to keep up, eventually stopping when it felt like I’ll just vomit and fall.

But I made it, and immediately started looking for places slightly farther away to go next time. I was lucky not to get a puncture, I was carrying nothing that would’ve helped. And I’m luckier to find myself in this part of Europe where you can cycle for a hundred kilometers on dedicated cycling paths and barely see 30 other people. I want to ride 160 kms in a day next, because that’s 100 miles, because I don’t need a better reason. It will suck even more, it’ll be brutal, but it’ll be 8 precious hours of my life spent in blissful pain, alone.