What Does it Take to Ride Across America?

Speaking about riding a bicycle as I will be doing in 2026 as a fundraiser for the City of Hope, cancer awareness, treatment, research, and education/support for those family members and friends impacted by this deadly disease. See more on my Why page as well as the Four Horsemen post. This won’t be an easy undertaking but I have done my research finding a very doable route that conveniently ends in St. Augustine, FL not too far from where my two granddaughters live in beautiful St. Mary’s, GA. A shout out to the great people at Cycle of Life Adventures for leading this ride.

This route will encompass approximately 3,000 miles, over 79,000 feet of climbing (about 15 miles), and it will be covered in 45-days of which 39 days are riding. Based upon my best estimates from analyzing the road profiles, allowing for headwinds, some sight-seeing, and tiredness like I have never experienced before I expect to complete this in under 200 hours of riding time. I expect that this effort will burn almost 100,000 calories! That is a staggering amount of energy burned that I need to try to refill as much as possible while riding. There is no way to attempt this without eating and drinking at least ½ of my day’s calorie expenditure while riding. And ideally grabbing another 25 percent while stopped for coffee break and / or lunch. 

Details below. Expect more details in an upcoming Web Page as I go into the assumptions behind these calculations and the many things that can upset them each day. 

And that’s just 1,000 calories. Going to need a lot more!