Personally, I consider myself a pretty motivated person. Type A, if you will. I love training, but after 15 years of racing, I admit, I’m not always in the market for a new race. I want to train for something, but sometimes, racing just isn’t it.
This was definitely the case for me last fall.
Enter the bike tour: A reason to train (because who wants to show up to a tour and feel like it’s their first day back on the bike?) without the pressure of a race.
But for me, it was about even more than that.
How a Bike Tour Reignited My Drive
A former competitive cyclist, I shifted sports to ultrarunning a few years ago, only to find myself hobbling with my right ankle in a boot after a disastrous/embarrassing fall during the Leadville 100 last summer, which ultimately led to a DNF and an ER visit complete with crutches.
Though my fitness had never been higher, my motivation had never been lower. Honestly, I just wasn’t in a good place. But the one light at the end of the tunnel was a bike tour scheduled for 10 weeks post-race.
It was supposed to be a victory lap, a relaxing adventure. But it turned into so much more than that.
Turning Leadville Fitness Into Chianti Strength
The inGamba Chianti Classico tour was the perfect blend of enough mileage to make me feel fulfilled, but not so much that every day would be a sufferfest. There would be wine and fantastic meals, a post-ride massage, a gorgeous villa in a small town—and we’d get to hit the gravel and cover chunks of the famed Strade Bianche course.
As it got closer, I admit, I started to get a little nervous about my preparation. Not only was I coming back from injury, I hadn’t been on the bike much before that. I had fitness—but bike fitness? I wasn’t sure.
The tour became a reason to train and to keep my fitness up at a time when I was seriously questioning my commitment.
Since I couldn’t run or even walk without serious pain, I didn’t necessarily want to train. But after a week in the boot, I was cleared to gently spin. And then pedal. And before I knew it, the bike brought me back—and thanks to the countdown to the trip, I didn’t lose any of the fitness I gained prepping for Leadville.
I channeled my fitness into getting ready for the trip, where I knew I’d likely be one of the only women in the group. And I was determined to be able to keep up with the boys.
Bike touring gave my fitness a second life, and allowed me to enjoy training without stress. I love bike touring, and I think you will, too.
Bike Touring vs. Bikepacking
In recent years, bikepacking has become much more popular, and it often gets confused with bike touring. But there are major differences between the two.
When you’re bikepacking, you’re toting all of your gear along with you—clothes, sleeping bag, tent, food, everything. You stop and pitch a tent for the night, cook dinner on a camp stove or chow down on an entire pizza after a long day on the bike.
Bike tours, on the other hand, usually refer to guided rides organized by a professional outfit, where you’re riding during the day and staying in a hotel at night.
Bike tours vary in difficulty. Some are incredibly beginner-friendly while others tours can get pretty intense. For example, inGamba has an adventure led by former WorldTour pro Ted King that definitely isn’t for new riders!
The amount of support varies from company to company as well: on an inGamba, from the minute you’re picked up at the airport to the moment you’re dropped off, everything is organized and provided for you: the cycling kit, the perfectly dialed-in bike to the rides led by professional guides, and every delicious meal.
Also, some tours are lower key: you’re given a bike, a hotel room, and a cycling computer with ride routes loaded in, but you’re mostly on your own.
It’s up to you to decide what kind of adventure you want, and there isn’t a right or wrong answer.
Bike Touring as a Woman
For me, the decision to choose a guided bike tour like inGamba was easy.
I’ve been in the cycling industry for a lot of years, I have friends and colleagues sing their praises, and I’ve even done some work with them in the past.
But I’ll be candid here: Part of why I wanted to do a bike tour with a group rather than another trip to a cycling destination where I’d be riding solo was simple. I’m a woman and riding alone in an unknown place comes with a huge amount of stress around personal safety.
And I’m not alone in this. According to Strava’s 2023 survey of 3,000 cyclists, women were 73 percent more likely to feel comfortable riding with other cyclists versus riding alone. I’m willing to bet that this number is even higher when riding in unknown areas.
And sure, if safety isn’t a factor for you, you can certainly plan a bike tour on your own, booking your accommodation, planning your routes, and prepping for all the logistics. But if you’re a busy person in your daily life (again, shoutout to my fellow Type As), the idea of adding more logistics and prep to a trip can be downright unpleasant. Not to mention, the odds that you miss out on a great secret route or the perfect gravel climb or the best local restaurant in the area are pretty high.
If you’re going to do the thing, why not do it right?
Effort Without a Finish Line: The Spirit of a Bike Tour
Bike tours aren’t inherently competitive, nor do they need to be. You can absolutely go on one at whatever pace you’re comfortable with. But throw a bunch of cyclists together on some of the best roads in the world, and it’s likely that, while you’re not racing to the top of the climb, there’s a bit of effort involved.
Cyclists are going to try to bring out the best in themselves on any given ride, and by nature of doing that, we bring out the best in each other.
I was, as I predicted, the only woman in our small group on this particular inGamba trip. I was determined to not get left behind—partially because I firmly believe that when it comes to endurance and long days on the bike, women are certainly able to keep up with most groups of men, but also, because I wanted to prove to myself that one injury doesn’t define a year of training.
Preparing for Your Bike Tour
Preparing for a bike tour varies hugely from tour to tour, especially where gear and planning things like hotels and food stops are concerned.
If you’re booking a bike tour with a company, do your research before hitting ‘book now’ so you know exactly what you’re getting. Some questions to ask yourself include:
- Will you be riding with a group, or is it every man or woman for him or herself?
- Do you need to bring your own bike? If not, what bike will you be riding? (For example, at inGamba, you’re not stuck dragging your bike through the airport, you’re riding a Pinarello Dogma in their fleet.)
- Are meals included?
- Is there support on the route if you get a flat or your electronic shifting dies?
- Do you need to BYO snacks, or will they provide ride fuel?
Depending on the tour, you may need to pack some extras like your saddle bag or a burrito-style bag for the front of your bike to bring snacks. (That’s not the case with inGamba—if you’re hungry, just wave a hand and the follow van will drop you a bar if you don’t have one in your pocket!)
Training for a Bike Tour
While bike tours are done at your own pace, it’s more fun if you’re feeling ready for it.
A bike tour like inGamba doesn’t require a base level of fitness. But to maximize your enjoyment of the trip, I think having a fitness goal for the tour makes lots of sense.
Research shows that pre-vacation anticipation, including planning and preparing, can actually be as happiness-inducing as the trip itself. That’s right: Training for your bike tour, especially when it’s a bucket list trip like an inGamba Chianti Classico tour, can give you feelings of satisfaction and happiness long before your flight to Italy even departs.
That’s part of what I felt, and I can attest that it made the experience better knowing I had prepared for it in the best way possible.
So, how do you get in shape for a bike tour?
Terrain, Elevation, and Group Style: Planning for Success
Start with research on your bike tour so you know how to best prepare. Here’s what to consider:
1. Check the distance elevation stats.
Not all bike tours are created equal! Even within a company, daily distance and total elevation can vary from trip to trip.
Some of inGamba’s tours are climbing-focused, like the adventures in the Dolomites, while some are a bit more mild, like the Le Marche tour along the Adriatic Sea.
A good touring company will share distance and elevation stats for each day on their website so you can compare and consider what makes sense for you.
Use that information and compare it to your last few months of riding, looking at your log on TrainingPeaks and your riding activities.
Have you done similar rides, or will those climbing days be your biggest ever? Some people love a hard challenge on a bike tour, others want to simply enjoy the time on the bike.
Make sure you understand what you’re signing up for—this helps you prepare accordingly.
2. Check group ride status.
It’s important to know if you’ll be riding with a group or if you’ll be on your own.
If you’re riding with a group, you’ll want to spend some time brushing up on your group riding and drafting skills if you’ve been mostly riding solo.
If you only do group rides, but this trip will be more ‘at your own pace,’ you may want to do some solo rides ahead of time to remind yourself of what riding into a headwind solo feels like.
3. Check the terrain.
Now that gravel riding is becoming more popular, more and more bike tours are offering gravel cycling tours. At inGamba, there’s a new gravel trip that’s a twist on the classic Tuscany trip, focusing on the white gravel roads that made the Strade Bianche race the legend that it is.
Gravel roads on your tour mean you should have some experience with handling a gravel bike on rough roads—and you’ll need to remember that 50 miles of gravel will go slower than 50 miles of road.
If you have a bike tour on the calendar and are looking for a plan to get you to Day 1 feeling prepared, following a bike tour training plan like the inGamba 3-Month Tour Preparation Plan can be extremely beneficial for any cycling trip.
While many base training plans assume you have 12+ hours per week to train, this tour-focused plan focuses on the most efficient training schedule and assumes that the people joining the trip are busy and have minimal time to train, especially during the week—perfect for someone who wants to build up to big goals in cycling again, but needs a bit of a break from hefty training hours.
The Joy of Suffering Without a Start Line
While the pace never pushed me out of my comfort zone entirely, the eight-week training block I’d put in that focused on long, meandering climbs and remembering how to ride in a group paid off in a big way.
Not only was I more comfortable even on the days when the weather turned on us—naturally, the gravel ride was a mudfest in parts!—but I felt confident on the bike again. And yes, I loved the mud. I felt confident as an athlete again.
For me, it was the exact break I needed from a racing goal to reinvigorate my training. It was enough of a ‘finish line’ that I still had a goal and a reason to show up for myself on the bike every day, but not so much that I felt like I was getting stressed as the day approached. It was the right stimulus to leave me feeling excited, not jittery.
When you crest that big climb on the queen stage of whatever tour you’re on feeling strong, feeling like you earned the views, you’ll only be wondering only one thing: Where can you go next?
