Commuting – Do you take a long route in?

My direct door to door route to work is about three miles, one long A road, plus city traffic from hell.

Been patching together for the last year or so, a route that where possible keeps me off road, away from traffic , down tracks, some cheeky, canal paths & some all too short but fun single-track, it even nearly loops on itself 😉

So my 3 mile door to door is now a 8 mile chilled ride into work.

It does confuse my Mrs when I set off in the opposite direction to work 😉

Just wonder if I am the only one who does this?

Nope. I used to (can’t do it at the mo as I have to drop mini-clubber off at nursery) get up extra early quite often and do much longer routes to work or leave work early and do a long route home.

yeah i do this a fair bit, its 4 miles door to door on my commute but I can do 7-8 miles on the way in and about 15 on the way home.
in the summer I’d do a long ride home of about 30 miles once a week.

i was thiking about it, but its already a 74 mile return commute. During summer i’ve taken a 110 mile return route a few times and wil prob do that next summer as well.

Not of any meaningful extra distance. Only perhaps an extra couple of miles. But I have a reasonable minimum distance to get to work anyway (17 miles each way).

already 25 mile return trip mainly off road with 800m climbing, so don’t often extend it, sometimes do on nice crisp mornings.
Did extend it a bit on the longest day to make it a 50 mile, 5 hour monster in the morning to see the sun rise.

I’ll do a couple of miles extra to spend nearly all of the route to work off road. Going home is entirely different – I’ll take up to 2.5 hours and go properly out of the way.

Yep I add on a few miles to use quiet country lanes where possible and if conditions are right add a couple near to work to ride through a local nature reserve.

Quick route in-long(er) route home.
Conserving energy for the day!

My short commute is 15 mins there, 20mins back. Half the time I lengthen it to an hour or so depending on time or if I’m riding proper that night. Got a few variations to make the longer way longer or shorter longer or more picturesque including the a trip through a Royal Estate and over the longest remaining packhorse bridge in Great Britain.

I try and get up as late as possible so no, direct route in, long ride home 🙂

Mine is a 17 mile (34 round trip) commute on road between Hudds and Leeds along the A62. Not really any off road possibilities, not enough to take my only MTB on (Pitch Pro) anyway! I have extended the ride home once to do 22 miles but it was a bit miserable. I wish my commute was 7-8 miles then I’d do it more often (currently once or twice a week) and could extend it without making it a huge epic ride.

My direct route is about 10 miles down the A420, so I make a loop and do 12.5 miles through the lanes on the way in and 14 miles on the way home with options of up to 40 miles dependant on time & energy

13 miles (one way) direct and I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning so don’t extend the route IN very much, quite often go home the long way tho.

yup… usually on the way home though. Normally spend my afternoons thinking about where I’m going on ma bike rather than work. Priorities.

It depends. I often take the harder hillier route on an already hilly 20 mile commute in and sometimes extend it to 30 miles home – or ride the mountainbike to get some offroad miles over the Clent hills.

So not necessarily longer, but harder!

Apart from racing the odd roadie I usually can’t be arsed and just go straight to home/work. My commute is only a few miles and it’s all flat.

Probably cos I’m lazy and it’s a lot less fun now I’m on the road bike than on the mountain bike where every flight of steps, speed bump or embankment was an oppourtunity for gnar!

Occasionally switch my inward route from the usual 17.5 miles to a 27 mile quieter route with about 8 miles of it on a river cycle path

Its more usual to extend the homeward route.

yes

my direct route is 5miles
go this route if it’s raining or i’m running

the long route is either 10miles or 15miles

A paltry 14 mile round trip that gets extended to 20 if i take the canal route….of course this normally involves an extra 20mins while i stop to fix the puncture i’ve picked up from all the bastard thorns.

I have a 36 mile round trip mostly using a Sustrans route – quiet roads, tracks & paths.

The A road is shorter, but my life expectancy would be less than a fortnight 😯

Direct route for me is 2.5 miles, chilled cycle path route is 6.5 – I never consider the shorter route.

over the summer I turn the 4 miles bang down the canal home into either a 15 mile round trip via road, or 18 miler up the river wey and across the basingstoke canal.

just got myself a spanky new light from mr spokeshirt so shall be getting invovled in the evenings now aswell!!

I always like to take the safest route. I used to have a direct route that was about 30minutes but I could take the Leeds-Liverpool canal towpath that took me door to door. Only trouble was it looped right the way round Wigan and turned the route into an hour or more. I now have over an hour along a busy A road, so I miss that quiet peaceful journey in.

My direct route is 11 yards from the kitchen to the office.

So my 3 day a week 13 miler pre work is a wee bit of a detour.

fastest / shortest route to a station for the train = about 6 miles. Generally I do 16-30 miles instead so yes, the long way round for me…

10mile route, struggling to get out of bed at the moment, then tend to race on the way home and try and beat times.

I have a choice of either a 10 mile ride or a 6 mile ride to work.

I work 6 days in then 4 days off.

On the 6 days I work, I have to do 2 early shifts, 2 late shifts and 2 night shifts.

I ride the 10 mile route on most days, I just ride the 6 mile route when I finish my 2 late shifts which end at 2am.

This is mainly because the 10 mile involves riding a 2 mile stretch of blind corners on fast rural unlit roads and I worry that drivers will come flying around a corner not expecting to meet a bicycle on the road at 2am in the morning 😯

I’ve recently been doing a 45 mile round trip commute once a week, and the route that takes in the quietest roads (a lot of it along the brilliant Route 70 – Cheshire Cycleway) is actually remarkably direct… but still 22.5 miles each way. It’s great fun on the CX bike which copes with the somewhat agricultral roads; just wish I had the energy to do it more frequently – in addition to the proper MTB night rides and weekend runs too.

It’s a simple request: please can I have more time to cycle, less time for working and sleeping, and some stronger legs and lungs. That is all. 😉

3.5 miles from work . I’m not exactly what you would call a morning person – so it’s straight in and the scenic route home. Luckily there are a few routes I can take home varying between 5 and 20 miles, so I mix it up as much as possible.
The other advantage is that there is a shower at home where as the mud splattered look isn’t wholly acceptable at work if I do the off road route on the way in!

I do occasionally take the long route but as it’s a nearly 60 mile round trip for the short route I don’t do it very often 🙂

depends on the shift pattern I’m working.
prefer the long one one the way home though.