A Bicycle Touring Fitness Plan

(This article was originally written from May to December, 2003)

Back in May I returned from a heavy duty work assignment in a city away from home. I worked many long hours and the assignment was successful. Unfortunately in the process I ate restaurant meals every night and severely reduced my usual fitness related activities.

When I returned in May I weighed in at 213 pounds. I am 5'10" and according to some charts this put me in the low end of the obese category. These same charts showed that a more "optimum" weight for someone of my height was 153 pounds. This is a 60 pound difference.

I decided at that point to set a goal of reaching 170 pounds by the end of December 2003. This is a reduction in weight of 43 pounds.

Initially I had very few ideas about how to achieve my goal other then to start bicycle commutting to work on a daily basis and possibly doing a two to three week tour later in the summer as a way to peel the pounds off.

I also decided that I had better do some research.

As a result of lots of reading I came up with the following five things that I needed to do. I didn't start all of them at the same time however since in some cases it took some research before I realized that I needed to add this extra thing.

Element One: Cardio exercise
Element Two: Nutrition/Calorie Counting
Element Three: Strength training
Element Four: Improving flexibility
Element Five: Rest

Looking at this list today each element seems very logical and self-explanatory. It wasn't that simple on day one so I will go over these elements in the course of this discussion.

Before I continue I should probably let you know where I am today. It is now September and I have completed a 12 day tour around Lake Erie.

I weigh 171 pounds. My body fat percentage is now 19 percent and my aerobic capacity, strength and flexibility have increased very measurably.

I still have more to do but I have already achieved significant success.

How does this apply to Bicycle Touring?

The obvious answer is that a tour is more enjoyable the better prepared you are for it. Many people think of equipment and the bike when discussing preparation. Another key area is your level of physical fitness.

By the time I left for my tour I was down to 185 pounds and my cardio endurance was significantly improved. I had been doing strength training for about five weeks so muscles no longer ached on the bike as quickly as in the past. My flexibility training was a recent development which only really got going about three weeks before the tour.

All of these added up to me doing seven metric centuries (100 km) and one imperial century (162 km) in 10 movement days and most importantly in every case I could have continued pedalling further had I wanted to.

So let's talk about the five elements with emphasis on how they help on the bike.

I should mention one more thing first. I am not a doctor nor am I a certified fitness trainer or a nutritionist. In actual fact I work in computers. What I am is someone who is recounting what I've done and what has successfully worked for me over the past five months. By writing this article I am hoping that you may be able to use a few of the things that worked for me to help yourself.

Here we go....

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