Riding the GART

We’ve now finished bicycling the eastern end of the Great American Rail Trail (GART), a truly awesome bike trek. We previously completed other segments of the GART in Nebraska and west, and I thought I’d put together a map that shows our overall progress. We still have a long way to go, but we’ve made a pretty good dent in the GART.

The map below shows our route from Washington DC to the outskirts of Chicago. On the map, the green lines show the trails we biked. The red trail segments are gaps in the trail network, and are actually roads that connect between completed trail segments. We biked some of these route gaps, but not all. The white blocks are future connections, usually with no suggested routing. We used maps.me to find bike routes through some of them, but if the improvised routing took us on highways, through busy urban areas, or roads we didn’t feel safe biking on, we skipped them. Our goal is to ride the entire GART as it currently exists, excluding sections that aren’t yet completed, and with that rationale in mind, we’ve now completed the eastern section.

The GART is actually made up of dozens of local converted rail-trails and towpaths. The map below shows most of these local trails in the eastern portion. The Ohio to Eerie Trail, which is shown as a 163 mile trail segment, is actually made up of about ten smaller trails, which I didn’t break out.

Some Stats for the Eastern end of the Route

We “yo-yo’d” most of the route, which means we’d park Blanche near the trail, ride along it for 15-20 miles, then ride back to Blanche, for a total of 30-40 actual miles. The next day, we’d park Blanche where we left off and repeat the process. Thus, we ended up riding most of the trails twice. (As our biking guru and nephew, Erik, pointed out, that way we got to see both sides of the signs along the way). An exception to this was a segment of the Great Allegheny Passage Trail (GAP), much of which parallels the Amtrac train route. We biked from Connelsville to Cumberland, stopping at hotels each night, then rode the Amtrac back, so we only did a one-way on this section.

  • Trail miles ridden: 748

  • Actual miles ridden: 1520

  • Number of states (including Washington, DC): 6

  • Trails ridden: 32

  • Average speed: 12.3 mph

  • Days of riding: 51

  • Average miles per day: 29.8 miles

  • Most miles in a day: 40.2 miles

Stats for the Entire GART So Far

On the map below, the blue lines show all the segments of the GART that we’ve completed. We’ve still have a ways to go, but we are making progress.

  • Trail miles ridden: 1175

  • Actual miles ridden: 2240

  • Number of states ridden in (including Washington, DC): 11

  • Number of states completed: 9

  • Trails ridden: 54

  • Most miles in a day: 40.2 miles

Some observations

As with most exercise related activities, we got better with time. When we started, 30 miles was a pretty good day - much more, and out bums were quite sore. It wasn’t the first day, but the second, third or fourth consecutive days of riding that chafed our butts. By the end, however, forty miles was a reasonable day; I think I actually have calluses down there. Guess we are getting to be real hard asses…

We took a lot of falls during the first few weeks on the trail, but managed to stay upright more later in the trek. Part of this was due to improving our skill levels, like knowing to cross railroad tracks and ruts at a right angle, or getting better at maneuvering through narrow gates without catching a pedal or handlebar. Our balance improved as well, as did our confidence levels.

With all the practice we had, when we did fall, we did it much more gracefully. ‘Don’t break the fall with your arm, tuck those elbows in, keep your head down and roll with it’ became our mantra. I even did a blog on how to fall off a bike gracefully.

As with our sailing days, we became much more attuned to the weather. We started our treks early in the morning on the hot days of July and August, but waited until late morning on the cooler days of fall, and tried to plan around rainstorms and showers when we could.

Riding a bike for several hours a day burns a lot of calories, and we could eat pretty much what we wanted without gaining weight.