Experiences with very long (100mi +) bike rides?
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ukulelist
Posts: 33 Member
TL;DR: I'd love to hear anyone's experiences, good or bad, with going on endurance bike rides during pregnancy. Either if you kept doing very long rides with some climbing and it turned out fine, or you wish you hadn't, or if you stopped and what your reasoning was.
Longer story: I'm signed up to do the AIDS/Lifecycle in June, which is a 7-day ride averaging 80 miles a day, at which point I'll be 4 months pregnant. My personal opinion had been that this will be fine as long as I don't do anything stupid and am willing to sag if there's a day I don't feel good. I've been doing training rides up until now and have felt fine, although I had to skip a couple weeks during the first trimester because of nausea, and I'm a little slower than usual. I have to keep my heart rate lower than normal to feel well, but that's fine---even if I go slow and take time at each rest stop, there's plenty of daylight to finish each day's ride.
However, my doctor has been advising me not to do it, and basically every acquaintance who finds out I'm pregnant (and isn't an athlete) tells me I'm crazy. (The one exception is my friend who's an athlete and mom of two, and tells me to go for it). My doctor's main concern is that I would have an elevated temperature for a prolonged time, although to me I would have been surprised that my temperature could be so high that it would be dangerous without my noticing. My dad's concern is that the bicycle seat's proximity to my uterus will somehow jounce the baby out of me. Haha.
It's hard for me to know what to do, since from what I've read exercise is not only OK but actually beneficial to health during pregnancy---but at the same time obviously I don't want to take any unnecessary risks. There doesn't seem to be any reliable science about exactly how much or what type of exercise could be dangerous, so collecting anecdotes from a fitness board has started to seem like a good idea
Would love to hear any input you folks have, especially personal experience with doing this kind of thing.
Longer story: I'm signed up to do the AIDS/Lifecycle in June, which is a 7-day ride averaging 80 miles a day, at which point I'll be 4 months pregnant. My personal opinion had been that this will be fine as long as I don't do anything stupid and am willing to sag if there's a day I don't feel good. I've been doing training rides up until now and have felt fine, although I had to skip a couple weeks during the first trimester because of nausea, and I'm a little slower than usual. I have to keep my heart rate lower than normal to feel well, but that's fine---even if I go slow and take time at each rest stop, there's plenty of daylight to finish each day's ride.
However, my doctor has been advising me not to do it, and basically every acquaintance who finds out I'm pregnant (and isn't an athlete) tells me I'm crazy. (The one exception is my friend who's an athlete and mom of two, and tells me to go for it). My doctor's main concern is that I would have an elevated temperature for a prolonged time, although to me I would have been surprised that my temperature could be so high that it would be dangerous without my noticing. My dad's concern is that the bicycle seat's proximity to my uterus will somehow jounce the baby out of me. Haha.
It's hard for me to know what to do, since from what I've read exercise is not only OK but actually beneficial to health during pregnancy---but at the same time obviously I don't want to take any unnecessary risks. There doesn't seem to be any reliable science about exactly how much or what type of exercise could be dangerous, so collecting anecdotes from a fitness board has started to seem like a good idea
Would love to hear any input you folks have, especially personal experience with doing this kind of thing.
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Admittedly, I do NOT have experience doing multi-day distance rides while pregnant. But I will ask, have you done any similar rides before? A few years back I did a 5 day ride, about 75 miles per day. It was a great experience but it did get grueling at times. We had an unexpected heat wave combined with high humidity. It was brutal. SAG support was good, but it seemed they weren't there when I needed them. Just par for the course when they have such a long distance to cover. I'm not sure I would've enjoyed it while pregnant.
I had my baby early December of last year (so I'm thinking I was about a year ahead of you). I kept riding--indoors and out--for my entire pregnancy. But there were days that 10 miles felt like a century... It seemed to be very day-by-day for me. If you choose to do the ride, congrats & good luck. But if you back out, I don't think anyone would fault you for it. It's not the time to be a super-hero, you're doing plenty just toting that kid of yours around!0 -
Admittedly, I do NOT have experience doing multi-day distance rides while pregnant. But I will ask, have you done any similar rides before? A few years back I did a 5 day ride, about 75 miles per day. It was a great experience but it did get grueling at times. We had an unexpected heat wave combined with high humidity. It was brutal. SAG support was good, but it seemed they weren't there when I needed them. Just par for the course when they have such a long distance to cover. I'm not sure I would've enjoyed it while pregnant.
I had my baby early December of last year (so I'm thinking I was about a year ahead of you). I kept riding--indoors and out--for my entire pregnancy. But there were days that 10 miles felt like a century... It seemed to be very day-by-day for me. If you choose to do the ride, congrats & good luck. But if you back out, I don't think anyone would fault you for it. It's not the time to be a super-hero, you're doing plenty just toting that kid of yours around!
Thanks for the feedback! I've done some long single-day rides (not much more than 100 miles at a time) but I've never done anything like this that went on multiple days. I'm sure it's exhausting... but then again so are other things that pregnant women do safely (such as having a toddler at the same time... haha) so I really don't know how to decide how dangerous that is.
I definitely don't want to try to be a superhero, but I do also feel like this might be my last chance for a while to be able to take a week and do something like this, so I'd regret missing that if I can do the ride... So hard to decide though
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I have done some long distance cycling in the past (before I was pregnant) and I was still was doing 30-50 mile rides semi-regularly in very early pregnancy. At my first OB visit, I talked with my doc specifically about outdoor cycling and her primary concern was specifically regarding balance (especially once your belly gets bigger). Evidently she has seen a few ladies lose their balance and fall of their bike leading to a loss of their respective babies. She advised against it once I was out of the first trimester and she said to tred lightly during the first trimester.0
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Generally, I go with 'if your doctor says its okay.'
Where your doctor is against it, I am kinda inclined to think you should listen to him. Imagine how awful it would be if something bad did happen.
I have no other justification beyond my opinion outside of this and no experience in that area. I just personally don't think it sounds like a good idea.0
