About Me

My name is Chris White. I was born in England but left after high-school and lived in the USA and Canada for about 5 years each (studying, working and traveling) before moving to Switzerland for a university research job about 15 years ago (I had several articles published on cognitive psychology). After 5 years, I decided to stay in Switzerland and became one of the rare breed of bike mechanics with a PhD.

I’ve been riding bikes seriously since the mid-1990s. A couple of weeks after buying my first adult bike, I embarked on a failed attempt to ride from Chicago to New Orleans in the USA; I had a lot to learn. That started my passion for bike touring and I slowly learned how to plan tours better, what equipment to use, how to improve comfort and efficiency on the bike, etc.

Bike touring was always as much about the cycling challenge as it was the traveling component for me, so when I heard about the first edition of The Transcontinental Race (TCR), I was very intrigued. I didn’t have the confidence to participate in the 1st edition in 2013, but I became an avid dot watcher and signed up for the 2014 TCR. I participated in 3 consecutive editions of the TCR (2014-’16) and was a control point manager in 2019. Most years, I do at least one official bikepacking race / event and do regular ultra-distance rides by myself or with friends.

To know more about the riding that I do, you can follow me on . A section of this website contains My Personal Ride Reports (but it needs updating).

Motivation for this Website

I had to scratch halfway through my second Transcontinental Race in 2015 due to a back problem that flared up a few weeks before the start and got really serious during the race (to be honest, I shouldn’t have started, read my Race Report). I then heard of many other people’s stories about scratching, some of whom stopped due to problems or injuries that I felt could have been avoided if they had started better prepared (almost 50% of the starters did not finish that year).

I therefore started to create this website in September 2015. The fist pages were about how to prevent over-use injuries from long-distance cycling (which has become the core content of the Rider Comfort section) and I’ve slowly expanded it from that to currently include over 70 pages on every topic related to bikepacking and ultra-distance cycling. I did a major overhaul of the content, organization and appearance of the site at the end of 2016 and created the Ride Far domain. I’ve slowly added more sections, overhauled the visual appearance and updated information over the years.

My writing style is to include a lot of detail, sometimes too much maybe, but many people have contacted me to say me that they appreciate the detail, so I see no need to simplify things. I try to present all valid alternative points of view, but at the same time I highlight that which I believe to be the best. I’ve always appreciated factual websites like the great Sheldon Brown’s and Peter White’s; if this site is anywhere near as useful to other people as their sites have been to me then I will be satisfied.

Support Ride Far

If you’ve found this site useful and you’d like to support it then please use one of these PayPal Donate buttons to buy me a drink. Thanks.

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When you use the affiliate links to Amazon that I’ve included with many of the products that I recommend, you’ll pay nothing extra but I’ll receive a small commission. You can also go directly to Amazon using the links below and I’ll receive a small percentage of any purchases that you make (with no cost to you). Once again, thank you.

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