Cycling at Night: Must-Know Tips and Benefits
While cycling during the day has its perks, sometimes, the peacefulness of a nighttime ride offers a welcome change of pace. If you plan to cycle at night, you’ll want to prepare for this new environment.
When night cycling, the essential tips, and benefits include having effective lights and reflectors. You should also plan your route, check the weather, and let someone know where you’re going. Finally, don’t forget to bring your bicycle repair kit—these will provide a safer cycling experience.
Any new environment, including a nighttime one, can initially be intimidating for cyclists. However, if you plan and come prepared, it provides an almost meditative experience. Read more to discover must-know tips and benefits for cycling at night.
1. Choose Your Cycling Route Carefully at Night
The first step when riding at night is choosing your planned route with utmost care. The best locations are those you often ride during the day, so you know what to expect. One of the drawbacks of night cycling is the lack of visibility, so knowing the route beforehand can go a long way to prevent accidents.
Additionally, consider what the route will look like at night time. Are you riding in a well-lit area with minimal traffic? Or are you considering a high-traffic area with poor lighting? Knowing the route will help you prepare for your ride and make suitable choices for your chosen path.
While bikes have been around for decades, newer technology can augment the cycling experience. Consider an app such as Bikemap, which offers bike routes for your area, and find a way you know and are comfortable cycling. Additional apps such as Google Maps or Waze can help determine traffic conditions for your ride.
Some of the best routes for nighttime riding are those that are very busy during the day but see minimal traffic at night. If you know a way well but find it’s much quieter at night, consider riding there for a unique experience.
2. Pick a Time That’s Quiet and Relaxing To Cycle
One of the best benefits of cycling at night is the offer of a peaceful, meditative ride. However, some areas see significant traffic and activity even at night. Depending on your schedule and the routes available, choose a course free from nighttime traffic—and enjoy the serenity of your nighttime ride.
3. Choose the Right Lights and Reflectors for a Night Ride
While the first step to planning your nighttime ride is planning the route, the most critical step is to have suitable lighting for your nighttime ride. Lighting provides the necessary visibility to see where you’re going. More importantly, lighting lets drivers and other cyclists know where you are on the road.
However, you don’t want to blind others with your bike lights. When riding, ensure the front light is pointed slightly towards the ground. This placement helps illuminate the ground ahead of you without displaying light directly at an oncoming vehicle.
Depending on where you live, there are different bike laws for how to light your bike. Within the United States, these laws vary by state. In general, the best practice is to have front lights and rear lights during nighttime cycling. Helmet lights are optional and provide additional lighting that tracks your field of view.
Protective Front Bicycle Lights
The front lights on a bike provide white light and illuminate the road ahead of you while you ride. While these lights primarily help the rider, they should still be visible to drivers from about 650 ft (200 meters) away.
Additionally, the intensity of the light is essential to consider. Not enough lighting can limit visibility in low light settings, while too much light can create a blinding effect. Bike Radar generally recommends 200-400 Lumens on your front light for lit conditions and 400-800 lumens on unlit roads.
Protective Rear Bicycle Lights
Rear lights produce red light and only require about 20-100 lumens to give off significant visibility. Their purpose is to let other drivers and cyclists know where you are. While they don’t require as much power during a ride, you still keep them charged to ensure they don’t begin to fade in the middle of a nighttime ride.
Protective Bicycle Helmet Lights
Helmet lights are an optional addition to your nighttime riding experience. While the law does not require helmet lights—they can still provide an ample boost to your visibility during a ride.
The main advantage of helmet lights is that they track the movements of your eyes. Rather than having a static light pointing ahead, you have illumination wherever you turn your gaze. Additionally, helmet lights are handy when you need to stop for a quick repair or maintenance.
4. Use Reflectors To Boost Your Visibility at Night
While lighting goes a long way to providing essential visibility, reflectors help boost that visibility to surrounding traffic. Reflectors are any material that reflects light to increase your visibility to those around you.
The most common place for reflectors is on the bike’s rear end, alongside a rear bike light. Many states require a rear bicycle reflector when riding at night or during overcast conditions.
Additionally, reflectors can be placed in the following places to maximize visibility:
- Wheels and pedals: reflectors on the bicycle wheels and pedals help create motion for the reflection, making it easier to spot from far away.
- Clothing: reflective clothing is very prominent to the eye and offers endless customization for the creative cyclist.
5. Ride Where There’s High Visibility at Night
The most common theme for cycling at night is visibility. You should ensure you control your visibility when you cycle—and determine a route that’s openly lit for a safer ride.
Aim for routes with many overhead lights, such as city streets or parks. Some of the most well-lit places also have the heaviest night traffic, so choose a path with prominent lighting and minimal traffic.
6. Bring a Friend or Let Them Know Where You’re Going
The solitude of a nighttime ride is a unique and wonderful experience. However, that solitude can leave you in the dark if something wrong happens. One of the ways to prepare for the worst is to hold yourself accountable to a friend.
If you prefer to ride alone, let someone know where you’re going and how long you’ll be gone. With cell phones, communication is just a click away. However, if you lose or can’t access your cell phone, having someone know where you help cover any eventuality.
Alternatively, consider bringing a friend or loved one along. There’s strength in numbers, and you can both enjoy the serene scenery of this dark environment. If one of you gets a flat or runs into maintenance issues, extra help is always welcome. Additionally, another person can help carry gear and backup clothes for rougher weather.
7. Consider the Weather When Riding at Night
Cycling at night offers unique considerations for those who primarily ride during the day. Not only is the same scenery entirely different, but the weather is also a big adjustment. When cycling at night, the air will be significantly cooler regardless of other weather conditions.
In the summer, the temperature difference can be pleasant and refreshing. However, a nighttime ride can be quite a frosty experience in cooler months.
In general, cover yourself up when riding at night to account for cooler temperatures, and bring extra clothing in case you need an additional buffer. The best practice is to dress in thin layers, going for more layers rather than thicker material.
Heavier material weighs more and doesn’t insulate as well as multiple layers. If you opt for clothing of several thin layers, the air between each layer warms up, creating better insulation overall.
Consider bringing rain gear if it’s looking stormy and do necessary bike maintenance (such as applying wet lube to your bike chain) to ensure an efficient ride despite the conditions.
8. Check the Maintenance of Your Bike Before You Ride
Our bikes do a lot of work to ensure we cycle safely and efficiently. However, that work adds up, and our bicycles receive some wear.
Maintenance involves:
- Checking in with the bike’s parts.
- Assessing their integrity.
- Performing any tasks to optimize the bicycle.
In other words, maintenance is a measure that prevents accidents while optimizing the bike’s efficiency during a ride.
There are three areas of the bike you want to check before you ride:
Check Your Bike Chain
The bike chain sees the most wear of any part of the bike due to its design and function. Bike chains are composed of many interlinking parts with tiny crevices and serve to transfer power from the pedals to the rear wheel.
Clean bike chains with a degreaser and wipe clean, then apply a bike lubricant. Different bike lubricants exist for various purposes—thicker lubrication lasts longer—but it’s generally more expensive.
Ensure Your Tires Are Sound
Check the tires for air pressure before your ride to ensure they work at peak efficiency. The pressure range for your tire will vary. However, almost all tires indicate their optimal pressure range on the tire’s outer body. We measure tire pressure in pounds per square inch (PSI).
Pressure is also dependent on your route and conditions. For road bike tires with minimal terrain changes, a PSI of 90-120 is optimal. Mountain bike tires have more volume and surface area, decreasing their optimal PSI to 25-40. Hybrid bike tire pressure depends on the tire specs and the conditions of the route.
Make Sure Your Brakes Are Functioning Well
Whether you have brake pads or newer disk brakes, these crucial parts can wear down over time. While the brakes don’t need maintenance as often as the chain or tires, checking them beforehand is a quick and easy step to ensure they’re operating correctly.
It’s much better to deal with problems at home before they arise. However, accidents happen, and you can mitigate them with a backup repair kit.
9. Bring a Backup Repair Kit for Night Cycling
While you can do everything in your power to prepare for any eventuality, part of the nature of cycling is the surprises around every corner. While most surprises are pleasant, there are times when we run into unexpected hiccups on a nighttime ride.
Bring a backup repair kit to cover any unexpected events on a ride. This kit can be a DIY assemblage of the necessary gear. Alternatively, you can buy a pre-constructed kit at any local bike shop or retailer.
Either way, when cycling, Backroads suggests the following items to bring along:
- Hex wrench set
- Multitool
- Philips and flathead screwdrivers
- Spare tire tubes
- Tire levers
- Portable bike pump
- Cleaning supplies
- Chain lubricant
- Pedal wrench
- Backup light and batteries
While this may seem like many items, all of these are compact and lightweight. They can fit snugly into a small pouch that you can attach to your bike’s frame.
10. Stay Focused When Cycling in the Dark Hours
Once you’ve prepared for your nighttime cycle, staying focused throughout your ride is crucial. During the day, it’s easy to spot vehicles and objects that may interfere with a seamless ride, but you have limited visibility at night and should be vigilant.
Staying focused not only keeps you safe but also directs your attention to all the benefits nighttime cycling has to offer.
The Many Benefits of Nighttime Cycling
Nighttime cycling offers certain benefits over daytime rides beyond the lack of annoying traffic and the relentless heat of summer days. Let’s explore some of the benefits in greater detail.
Cycling at Night Increases Reaction Time
Not only can cycling at night boost feelings of relaxation and focus, but it can also influence your reaction time. Learning to react faster while riding at night carries over to reaction time when riding during the day.
Because of the reduced visibility during nighttime rides, the environment requires cyclists to focus much more than during the day. At night you’re dealing with vehicles, other cyclists, animals, and even inanimate objects. These environmental factors can quickly become obstacles for cyclists who aren’t paying attention.
While this extra focus may seem more work for you, it often contributes to a much more excellent riding experience. Further, the lack of visibility forces our other senses, especially hearing, to excel in this new environment.
During cycling, hearing allows us to “see” 360 degrees around us. While we can’t see a car approaching behind us, we usually hear it coming. Warning noises such as an animal call or car horn are critical signals for us to perceive during a bike ride. The gains in reaction time and especially listening ability contribute to bike performance at any time of the day.
Nighttime Cycling Isn’t As Strenuous
Most of the time, a cyclist needs to consider how much the sun beats down when they go out to ride. Biking during the day is hotter. This heat means you’ll be expending more energy, sweating more, and drinking more fluids to compensate.
The strain on our bodies magnifies when exercising in the heat, leading to cramping, muscle fatigue, and dizziness during long rides.
Even on the hottest summer nights, the effects of the heat are less than during a daytime ride. Without the sun shining on you constantly, you’re much more energy efficient, require less water, and can go a lot longer before becoming fatigued.
Nighttime Cycling Offers Peace and Serenity
The most prominent benefit of nighttime cycling is the promise of peacefulness while riding. While cycling can be hectic during the day, at night, the same ride transforms into a relaxed and serene experience.
The lack of distractions and external stimuli during a ride, combined with the effort required to sustain exercise, can create a flow state. A flow state, or “being in the zone,” is a mental state where an individual becomes one with their task, creating a sense of completeness, euphoria, and peak performance.
Achieving flow typically requires an individual to be free of distractions, focused, and prepared for their current task. The best flow states occur when you are competent enough with an exercise to engage your focus. For most cyclists, cycling at night offers the perfect conditions for achieving flow.
Nighttime Cycling Offers a Unique Experience
To freshen up a bike ride, you’d need to choose a new route to learn. New cycling adventures are exciting and require planning and practice to understand and become proficient.
Cycling at night offers a unique environment on the same routes you know and love. The weather is different, the air smells special, and you can experience inspiring sights and sounds for the first time.
Conclusion
Of the many joys of cycling, riding in a new environment offers a pleasant change of pace. While you can choose new routes or destinations, cycling at night is one of the most potent ways to shake things up.
Cycling at night is a unique experience that offers peacefulness while increasing reaction time and focus.
When cycling at night, visibility is crucial. Bring adequate lighting and reflectors so you can see the road and others can see you. Additionally, plan your route, check the weather, let a friend know where you’re going, and have a backup repair kit.
