This is the best bikepacking tutorial video
I think I've linked to this before on my blog, back in September, but I'll do so again: this is the best video about how to do a long ass bike ride. Like, 50+ miles in a single day:
I didn't learn how to do long bike rides from this video, but I did learn many of these techniques through trial and error myself over the course of 2022 and 2023. Drinking sugary beverages, hydromaxxing in the days prior to the trip, preparing your body with sleep: it's all in here.
I do a lot of biking now, but I really only started doing this in the last couple years. I've always had an interest in endurance-based physical activity - I spent a lot of weekends walking quite literally all day for Ingress or Pokemon Go stuff, in years past - but I wasn't really all that good at it, and am still not very good at it. What makes bike riding exciting to me is that being "impressive" at it - biking all day - is not actually that difficult, and most people who are capable of being active on a bike are capable of learning how to feed and hydrate themselves so that they can bike all day. Biking long distances is much more a skill than a talent. You can really surprise yourself if you learn to handle your energy.
The most counterintuitive thing about biking all day is that you really do have to suck down sugar. If you want to become a Biking Lord you are going to have to discard any impulse toward self-deprivation. You need to have energy to have fun, and to have energy you have to eat. This guy is pouring a literal mound of sugar into his water and he is right to do it!! Type 1 diabetes made it hard for me to figure out how to do this, but once I did, I truly did become like a car, as he says. It was very weird to push through and realize that having diabetes actually gives me an advantage here... not only can I see my actual mg/dl of blood glucose every single minute thanks to my continuous glucose monitor, but I have so much experience tracking my fluctuating blood sugar that I can feel the state of not enough sugar with extreme sensitivity.
Anyway! More people can do this kind of thing than they think. I thought this video was a great introduction to the kind of super basic non-specialist stuff you can do to unleash yourself turbo style and become a fucked up human engine!