How Many Miles Should I Bike A Day?

Cycling is one of the healthiest activities out there, and it’s a refreshing way of passing your time. The best part about cycling is that it quickly turns into something more than just a hobby. However, spending too much time cycling can be detrimental for you, while spending too little time won’t affect you at all.

One of the biggest challenges of riding a bike is finding out the sweet spot for yourself. In this article, we’ll help you find out the amount of time you should spend cycling a day. So, let’s get right into it.

How Many Miles is A Good Bike Ride?

Now, this depends on a lot of things. In this section, we’ll go through the factors that you need to consider to determine how far should you ride for a good workout.

Objective

The most important thing that you need to consider before starting cycling is your objective. What do you wish to gain from exercising regularly? Do you wish to become a professional cyclist? Or are you cycling for losing weight?

The time you need to invest in cycling depends greatly on your goal. If you wish to become a professional and want to take part in a triathlon, then you’ll need to invest a lot of time into cycling each day. On the other hand, if your only aim is losing weight, you won’t have to invest as much time. Plus, the routine will be completely different for each of them as well.

In fact, it’s recommended to ride smaller tracks if you’re cycling for losing weight. For example, some experts recommend adults ride for 30 minutes and children bike for 60 minutes per day. In that time, an adult can ride about five miles if he’s riding at speed of 10 to 12 miles per hour on average. Even if you don’t take part in any other physical activities, you’ll benefit from these.

However, that doesn’t mean you should limit yourself to that only. Once you’re used to riding for 5 miles per day, you are encouraged to push yourself further. Try to take up the challenge of going more every day.

Then again, this definitely won’t help if you want to improve your skills and take part in competitions. To prepare for a competition, you need to ride at least 10 miles each day. Take this as the starting point and try to push beyond this every day.

If you’re planning on taking part in a cross-country ride, then you should be able to ride at least 100 miles in a day. It’s not necessary to ride that distance every day, but you should at least be able to do that.

To get to that point, you need to start small. Let’s say you’re preparing for a 100-mile race and have four months to prepare for it. Try riding 20 miles per day for the first month, 30 miles the next, then 40 miles, and finally 50 miles.

Often people ask how much they should ride every day for losing weight. To tell the truth, there’s no golden rule for it. The more you ride, the more weight you’ll lose. Then again, the heavier you are, the more calorie you’ll burn. Thing is that the amount of calories you’ll burn depends more on the intensity of the ride. So, you should focus more on how you’re riding, rather than the miles.

Medical Conditions

Your age and health are important factors in determining the miles you should ride for enjoying the maximum benefits. No matter what your age is, you should try taking it slow. If you’re confident, start with 3 miles a day.

Unless you have severe health conditions or conditions that cycling can make worse, then you shouldn’t worry too much. If you’re experiencing such conditions, you better contact your doctor before you start exercising.

Habit of Riding

One of the worst rookie mistakes is pushing yourself too hard when it comes to cycling. A lot of people end up riding for miles on their first day, only to wish they hadn’t done so.

Riding for a long time during your first week will do you more harm than good. This is why we highly recommend starting small. Don’t push yourself too much even if you’re confident that you can make it. You’ll only suffer later on and that’ll also hamper the consistency.

Location

The intensity of riding on rocky or steep terrain is much different than riding on plain terrain. So, you shouldn’t be comparing a 5-mile ride on rocky terrain to a 5-mile ride on a highway. The higher the intensity, the more calorie you’ll lose.

How Many Miles On A Road Bike Is A Good Workout

This is completely subjective. You’ll find enthusiasts who consider riding 75 miles at an average speed of 17mph a piece of cake, and beginners who find it tough to ride 5 miles at an average speed of 12 mph. Plus, how much intense the ride is matters more than how many miles you’re riding. Intensity depends on multiple factors such as terrain, speed, and capability.

However, there’s a good way of finding the sweet spot for yourself, but you’ll need a sports watch or similar device to do this accurately.

Warm up and get on your bicycle. Start riding and push yourself until your heart rate reaches at least 70% to 80% of the maximum. Lock on that speed and keep riding for 20 minutes. After that time, warm down a bit and slow down to lower your heart rate.

Keep lowering your heart rate until it reaches between 40% to 60%. Now, you should lock onto this and ride with that speed for an hour at a stretch.

If you’re new to cycling and only starting out or if you want to lose some weight, then this will help you out. Although the overall riding time stands at an hour and 20 minutes here, we recommend starting with 40 to 45 minutes first.

Keep pushing yourself to one hour and 20 minutes over time, and you’re most welcome if you want to go past that.

How Many Miles On A Stationary Bike Is A Good Workout?

Needless to say, stationary bikes aren’t suitable for training for triathlons. However, these are great for losing weight and for working your muscles out.

Riding stationary bikes will not only help you lose weight, but it’ll also help you combat certain health conditions like Diabetes Type 2.

The miles you need to ride to lose weight depend on multiple factors. One of the most important among them is how fast you want to lose weight. Another dominant factor is your body structure and weight.

According to Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, you are advised to spend at least 150 minutes exercising each week, which translates to 20 minutes per day. You are also required to take part in strength training at least twice a week. As per the guidelines, these are absolutely necessary for maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

However, this won’t cut it if you’re planning on losing weight. When it comes to losing weight, you need to start small and push yourself gradually.

We recommend starting with 30 minutes only. Make sure you pedal at a moderate speed throughout the time. Once you get used to this, you should increase this up to 60 minutes at least. You can push yourself further, but 60 minutes of cycling each day should be enough to lose a considerable amount of weight.

How Many Miles Should I Cycle A Day To Lose Weight

In this section, we’ll talk about how cycling a certain distance will affect your body. Hopefully, this will provide an even deeper insight to help you determine how many miles you should ride a day to lose weight.

Cycling 5 Miles A Day

Cycling 5 miles a day is a perfect routine for anyone who’s starting out. Five miles isn’t too short a length, it’s neither too long. If you’re a beginner, you’ll experience a considerable amount of changes by cycling 5 miles per day. Then again, this distance won’t overwhelm you.

If you don’t want to increase the distance traversed, you can still make the session more effective by increasing the intensity of each ride. So, it’s perfect for beginners for losing weight. However, you’re recommended to push this further.

Cycling 10 Miles A Day

Riding ten miles a day is a great upgrade over 5 miles, and it’ll definitely burn a considerably more amount of calory than the previous distance. Even if you’re a beginner, it shouldn’t take you more than an hour to complete 10 miles on a bicycle. If it does, then you should increase your speed and intensity.

If you bike at the speed of 10 miles per hour, you should be burning 400 calories after finishing a 10-mile ride. Please note that this completely depends on your weight, and in this case, we’re assuming you weigh 200 pounds. The more you weigh, the more calories you’ll burn. Including the system loss, you’ll need around an hour to ride 10 miles with that speed. That makes it a perfect workout.

Plus, it’ll put more pressure on your muscles and will make them work much more than the 5-mile rides. So, there will be a decent level of muscle workout in the lower parts of your body as well.

Cycling 20 Miles A Day

Many experts consider a 20-mile ride a day to be the ideal length for losing weight, and there are enough reasons to justify that belief.

Firstly, 20 miles isn’t a short ride. However, taking a ride shorter than 20 miles may leave you wanting for more, later on, forcing you to take a longer ride the next day. This will only leave you tired and may even cause muscle cramps.

Another amazing thing about a 20-mile ride is that it leaves enough windows to create some diversity in your ride. You can take things slow; you can pace things up and make them really intense, and you can also relax.

Needless to say, 20-mile rides will definitely burn a lot of calories. If you can mix things up and find the right balance between an intense workout and a relaxing ride, then you’ll have a great time riding!

Cycling 30 Miles A Day

If you’re willing to lose a significant amount of weight, then you should really try riding 30 miles a day. Even if you don’t make things too intense, you’ll end up losing a significant amount of weight every day.

In fact, many bicyclists reported that they experienced significant weight loss despite consuming 30% more calories than usual. This proves how effective 30-mile rides can be.

However, we definitely don’t recommend going for such long rides if you’re a beginner. You should have the habit of riding at least 20 miles consistently before you try this out. Otherwise, you’ll end up fatigued and it’ll keep you from riding the next day, which will break the consistency.

30-mile rides will only work if you can do them consistently, every day. So, you should definitely take things slow if you wish to ride 30 miles per day.

Conclusion

That was a lot of stuff to take in, so we highly recommend going through things again. You don’t want to miss even the smallest details as they can cost you a healthy and satisfying ride.

Trust me, jumping right into action won’t do you any good. Finding out the sweet spot of riding for yourself is far from easy, so you should take your time to sketch things out.