For most rides, the best time of day to ride a bike is early morning. It's cooler, the wind is lighter, there are fewer cars, and the ride is done before the rest of the day gets in the way. Your body puts out a little more power in the late afternoon, but on a hot day, a long day or a road you share with traffic, the morning is the better time to ride.
The worry behind the question is one of two things. You feel flat and slow at 7 a.m. and wonder whether you're simply an evening rider. Or you've got a riding trip coming up with early starts every day, and you are not a morning person.
The short answer
- Ride in the morning when the day will be hot, when the ride is long, or when the roads are busy.
- Ride in the late afternoon when you want your fastest legs for a short, hard effort and the weather allows it.
- Avoid the hours around dusk on roads with traffic, or ride them with bright lights front and rear.
- In summer, the worst time to start a long ride is late morning, because you'll finish in the hottest part of the day.
Why the morning is better most days
It's cooler
The hottest part of a summer day isn't noon. It's mid to late afternoon, somewhere around 3 to 5 p.m., because the ground keeps absorbing heat long after the sun is at its highest. A ride that starts at 7 a.m. and finishes by lunch misses the worst of it.
Heat makes the same speed harder. Your heart rate climbs, you sweat more, and you have to drink more just to stay hydrated. On a 40-mile ride you can ignore that. On a 90-mile day you can't.
The wind is lighter
On a clear day the ground warms through the morning and the wind builds with it. So the same loop that felt easy at 8 a.m. can have you riding home into a stiff wind at 3 p.m. If you've ever wondered why the last hour of an afternoon ride always seems to be into the wind, that's a big part of it.
There are fewer cars
Early on a weekend morning, the roads out of town are as quiet as they get all week. On a weekday, the quiet hour is the one before work traffic starts. Either way, fewer cars means a more relaxed ride and a group that can actually talk.
The air is cleaner on hot days
Ground-level ozone builds through the afternoon on hot, sunny days. If you notice it in your chest on a summer evening ride, the morning version of the same ride will feel better.
It's done by lunch
A ride that's done by lunch leaves you the whole afternoon to eat, rest and do something else. A ride planned for 5 p.m. has all day to get canceled by work, family or a sudden lack of interest.
What the late afternoon is better for
Your body temperature is at its lowest in the early morning and highest in the late afternoon, and warm muscles work better. Lab studies have found riders put out more power in a time trial in the late afternoon or evening than first thing in the morning. One measured about 10% more work in a 10-mile time trial in the evening.
Not every study agrees, though, and the difference depends a lot on the rider. People who naturally wake early, and people who already ride early most days, show much less of it.
- If you're chasing a personal best on a short, hard effort, ride in the late afternoon.
- If you're riding a long day, the small gain in power is smaller than what you lose to the heat and the wind.
If you feel terrible at 7 a.m.
Plenty of good riders feel awful for the first half hour of a morning ride. That's normal, and most of it is fixable.
- Warm up for longer. Ride the first 20 to 30 minutes easy. Your body is starting from its lowest temperature of the day, and it takes time to warm up.
- Eat breakfast at least an hour before you start, and make it something you've eaten before a ride already. Riding on an empty stomach is a big part of why mornings feel flat. There's more on this in what to eat on a bike tour.
- Go to bed earlier. A morning ride on six hours of sleep feels bad for reasons that have nothing to do with the time of day.
- Ride more mornings. Your body adjusts to the time of day you train, and the gap between your morning legs and your evening legs gets smaller the more mornings you ride.
- Dress for the start, not the forecast high. The coldest part of the day is around sunrise. Arm warmers and a vest you can take off and put in a pocket solve it.
If you have a trip coming up with early starts, start setting your alarm earlier a week or two before you go, and do your weekend rides early. By the time you arrive, 7 a.m. will feel like a normal time to be on a bike.
When to ride in the evening
Ride later when:
- You're doing a short, hard workout like intervals, and you want the best quality from it.
- It's winter. The afternoon is the warmest part of a cold day, and morning roads can have frost or ice on them in the shade.
- You can't ride in the morning. A ride at 5 p.m. is better than no ride at all.
If you do ride in the evening, take the light seriously. In federal crash data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the three hours from 6 to 9 p.m. account for more cyclist deaths than any other three hours of the day. Drivers are tired, the sun is low in their eyes, and then it's dark. Run a bright rear light and a front light, even in daylight, and plan the ride so you're home before dusk.
How riding trips are planned around the time of day
On a multi-day riding trip, the time of day matters more than it does at home, because tomorrow is another riding day.
A well-planned trip puts the riding in the morning for all the reasons above, plus four more:
- The hardest climb of the day gets done while it's cool.
- In the mountains and the desert in summer, thunderstorms build after midday. Being off the bike by early afternoon keeps you out of them.
- The afternoon is when recovery happens. You eat and drink the moment the ride ends, get out of your kit and shower, put your feet up and stretch, and then there's dinner and an early night. We go through that in order in what to do after a long bike ride.
- You get to see the town you're staying in. A ride that finishes at 1 p.m. leaves time to walk around, which is one of the main reasons to travel to ride.
A morning start in a place's best season is a very different ride from a morning start in its worst month. If you're picking when to go, the best time of year to go on a bike tour covers that.
What riders get wrong most
- Starting a long summer ride at 10 a.m. because the morning felt too early, then riding the last 30 miles in the hottest part of the day.
- Skipping breakfast before an early ride and blaming the hour for how it felt.
- Judging their morning legs by the first 20 minutes.
- Riding into dusk without lights because it was still bright when they left.
- Assuming they're "not a morning rider" after two early rides, when what they really were was short on sleep.