Biking has become its own thing.
Not just on our blog, but ever since COVID people have become more interested riding bicycles. That’s why we separated this category out from Nature-Hiking. Biking has developed to the point where the topic deserved to be dedicated rather than “lumped in”.
Fortunately even before COVID, many municipalities were already working towards creating more bike trails. The ability to exercise, spend time in nature and enjoy the outside weather was a real life saver for many.
Once we started searching, we realized that there’s a lot more biking trails available than we ever realized.
Introduction
To better organize our thoughts, we decided to take a path similar to our Nature-Hiking classifications, JMO has created similar categories that we think better describe the different types of bikers. The categories we selected to distinguish the classifications are as follows:
- Length – time (how long is the trip planned for), distance (how far the trip is planned for)
- Terrain – elevation (flat vs. hilly vs. mountainous), trail composition (paved vs. gravel vs. rocky)
- Speed (not applicable to mountain bikers)
With the above in consideration, we came up with 3 classifications – Casual Biking, Serious Biking, and Mountain Biking.
Casual Biking
Casual biking encompasses the vast majority of the general population. It is basically a part of a day trip that fits the level of activity the individual chooses. Normally the distance is up to around 25 miles depending on the intent for the outing. Most of the terrain is paved or hard gravel, and relatively flat.
A lot of biking can and is done on trails that have walkers (urban hikers as JMO defined in our previously mentioned Nature-Hiking article). However, bike trails themselves tend to be considerably longer. They also tend to be either paved or wide.
If not paved, they are well maintained gravel paths.
Casual Biking Logistics
Finding trails for casual biking is still an art. We at JMO have discovered it’s a combination of sites like All Trails and Googling to find what you are looking for. As an example, one of our local places to bike (and hike) is a combination of 4 separately named trails. We never knew they were one continuous trail until we started researching and actually biked them. We’ve highlighted them in two articles; our Newark, DE to Landenberg, PA Bike Trails, and the Newark Pomeroy South and James F. Hall Bike/Hike Trails.
If you’re using an app or website, be sure to use the filter “paved trails”. This forces the algorithm to focus on trails that you can ride bikes on.
One cool aspect of longer trails like the PA Grand Canyon – Pine Creek Trail, Virginia Capital Rail Trail, or the Delaware & Lehigh Canal Towpath Trail is that you can choose to do portions of the trail and break it up into more manageable biking. For those trails, there are typically shuttles that are offered.
While we prefer to stay off road as much as possible, there are still a number of roads where biking isn’t too bad. One of our favorite trails for road biking is Iona to Slaughter Beach. It’s 100% on the road system, however, most of the roads aren’t well traveled.
As we’ve encountered them on trails we’ve been on, there are bike clubs that have casual biking events. However, we have to admit we don’t know a whole lot about how they operate. We intend on doing more research on that in the future.
Serious Biking
Serious kudos to serious bikers. This is a group that is willing to sit on a bicycle for pretty much an entire day. They may even bike the entire 75 miles of the Great Allegheny Passage Trail from Pittsburg, PA to Columbia, MD either as a single trip or doing back to back day trips along the trail. Serious bikers don’t tend to worry about hills and distance. They also participate in competitions like we saw when we were biking on the Virginia Capital Trail, so they also tend to focus on speed as well.
From what we have seen, most serious bikers belong to a bike club of some sort. The trips are organized and people seem to enjoy each other’s company along their journey. Some clubs are more active than others. Our recommendation? If you think this is for you, do some research by using your browser to look for clubs in your area that fit the goals that you are trying to accomplish.
Mountain Biking
We’re not going to spend a lot of time with this one.
What do we know? It’s not for the faint of heart, some of us have seen the GoPro video of bikers going down the mountain, stairs, the X Games you name it. It’s also not something most people will do regularly, let alone attempt. Kind of like quintuple-black diamond skiing.
These folks are in a class of their own. They know who they are. They also know where to find each other and the mountain bike trails.
Practical Stuff
Whatever kind of biking you do, make sure you get the right kind of bike. You should also outfit yourself with appropriate equipment. Check out our article Selecting YOUR Bike During COVID for ideas that may assist you in deciding what you need.