How to Plan a 50 km or 100 km Bike Route: Loops at the Distance You Want

Your average speed decides everything, and it is lower than most people expect once traffic lights, junctions and short stops are included. These are realistic moving times on mostly flat terrain:

Fifty kilometers on a riverside path and fifty kilometers through hill country are different rides. As a rough rule, add about 10 minutes for every 100 meters of climbing. A 50 km loop with 600 m of gain will take around an hour longer than a flat one for most riders, and it will feel harder than that suggests.

So pick the terrain together with the distance. For a first long ride, choose a flat profile and save the climbing for later; our flat bike routes guide explains how to read elevation numbers. If you want the distance to count as training, a balanced or hilly route packs more work into the same kilometers.

Wind matters as well. On open terrain, 20 km against a strong headwind can cost as much as a climb. A loop that starts into the wind and brings you home with it behind you is much easier to finish; see our wind-optimized route guide.

The simplest way to ride 50 km is to ride 25 km in one direction and turn around. It works, but you see everything twice, and the second half often runs on the busy road you used to get out of town. A loop means new roads the whole way and usually a quieter way back.

Drawing a loop of an exact length by hand is fiddly, though. You end up dragging points around a map until the total looks right. In VeloRand you set the distance, choose the route type and elevation profile, and the app generates a round trip from your start point that comes back close to the length you asked for. If you do not like the result, generate again from the same settings for a different loop. Our circular route guide goes into more detail.

Up to about 2 hours, a bottle and a snack in your pocket are enough for most riders. Beyond that, food, water and a break start to matter, and on 100 km they decide whether the last hour is enjoyable or miserable.

Add a café, bakery or petrol station as a fixed waypoint at roughly the halfway point, or at about two thirds of the distance, when energy usually starts to drop. VeloRand then builds the rest of the loop around that stop. In autumn and winter, check opening hours before you go, because many rural cafés close early or only open at weekends.

A first 100 km ride is a classic goal, and most reasonably fit riders can manage it with a few weeks of preparation. A simple approach:

On a road bike, choose the road route type so the whole loop stays on paved roads, which matters more the longer you ride; our road bike tour planner guide has more on this. On a trekking bike, the trekking type is the balanced default, while the safety type steers you onto cycle paths and quiet roads, which is ideal for a relaxed 50 km with little traffic; our route types comparison explains the differences. For long rides off the road, the gravel type mixes in forest tracks and farm roads.

When the route is ready, export it as GPX and follow it in the navigation app or bike computer you already use. Our GPX export guide explains how.