Biking from Madrid to Santiago de Compostela

[Alejandro Melillo]

I live in Madrid, Spain. I and a couple of my friends from the states are planning to do el Camino in around 2 years (so we can get prepared both physically and economically) we're thinking we wanna start it from Madrid, and I actually have 2 questions:
-Do you think it's possible for people like us to do this?(who have never done a long hike or walk or anything like that)
-And if it is possible, what type of bikes should we buy for this?

Thank you

 

[Paschulke]

Of course you can do it! Just go in your own pace and take your time. The first two days were a little hard for me but after that it was ok, you get into it. I didn't didn't do any longer trips before for training, only 17-25km maybe once a week, max twice. Use crème, like Assos. We didn't in the beginning, but after a few days our butts hurt, so we started using it, and see, it got a lot better.

We bought mountain bikes for the trip. Partly because we mostly rode sand and gravel, but mtb's also provide a good frame-strength and can handle the extra loading. We also bought the same brand of bicycles so we only needed one set of spare-parts and tools.

Happy planning!

 

[Alejandro Melillo]

Thank you so much!