How to prepare for a long drive or trip for the driver

First thing you need to know about driving long hours, i mean more than 15 hours, there is nothing difficult or hard to prepare physically and everyone can do it. The hard part is to prepare psychologically and not everyone can do it.  I have driven for 30 hours nonstop once and quite a few times for 25 hours, if you prepare well you will be in a great shape to drive all the time you need.

Physical preparation:

• Do exercises before you go to sleep to get really exhausted and tired.(You will get much more relaxing sleep and also will wakeup with more energy in the morning than usual.)
• Arrange your sleeping hours to fit your driving time. ( For example tomorrow i will have to drive from 6pm. till 8am. so tonight i am forcing myself to go to sleep at 4am. This trick is more psychological than physical, your brain are used to routine sleep, so get them ready before you drive.)
• Keep the air in the room you sleep fresh and turn off all mobile phones, computers, tv’s, radios and other electric appliances.(It makes a significant diffrence in your sleep quality.)
• Do not eat anything more than a few sandwiches or a small soup before you go.
• Prepare green tea, i prefer Japanese tea “Sencha”. Also prepare food and drinks, which your travel mates could easily give you during the drive.
• Measure your driving skills and psychological preparation wisely, also the conditions of the road,traffic, speed limits, it is harder to drive 600km/375miles on icy road than 1600km/1000miles on clean highway.

Psychological preparation:

• Make sure you dont have any doubts, whether you will reach your destination or not.
• Prepare music for your trip and at least one cd with aggresive music, that would shake you up, when it gets harder and you get sleepy. Also a good idea is audio books to pass time.( I have tried last time audiobooks, it is nice that you can learn something while you are driving, but it gets annoying to listen to the same voice for 8 hours for example.)
• Create multiple destinations in your mind.(For example you are going from city A to city G, distance between them are 1000 miles or 1600km. Look up cities on your road that has smaller distances, for example from city A to city B distance is 100miles or 160km, imagine that your destination is that city, your mind will get very happy for you reaching your multiple destinations and it will keep your spirits up.)
• Do not use GPS navigation if you are going from well known city to another well known city using highways or motorways and you have good orientation.(Using GPS makes your traveling too easy, you dont need to think anymore, look at the signs, remember cities names and this is not a good thing to happen, when you need your mind to be as sharp as possible. Also you will start peeking how many kilometers or miles are left every few minutes and it will start looking like eternity.)
• Before the drive you should be in a really calm state, concentrated on one task to accomplish, to get to your destination. (I am usually calm before my trips naturally, but sometimes it helps to concentrate just to be alone for an hour, or to clean the car or anything else that helps you to relax.You can not afford to get distracted, because it takes a lot of energy that you can not lose.)

During the drive:

• Do not eat alot. You should almost all the time feel a little hungry, your digestive system uses more energy than you would think. During the drive at least half of your food should be fruits and nuts, they have lots of carbohydrates, which raises your energy levels and are easily digested.
• Do not drink energy drinks or coffee, energy drinks gives you a boost for a very short period, after an hour or few hours you will be feeling much more tired than you would be without drinking anything. You can drink energy drinks and they will help you, when you have an hour left for driving.
• Exercise your thingers,back  and move your legs every hour or every time you feel they are tired. If you dont care about this for lets say 18 hours, you can get out limping during the drive or with other joint pain.
• Drink green tea or fruit juices during the drive.(Green tea needs snacks after drinking, because you can get stomach ache.)
• Adjust your speed to your current tiredness state. If you see that you are much more tired than you were and its harder to drive, lower your speed, start your aggresive music, open the windoes, drink tea, talk with someone, till you feel you are in a better shape.
• Look after your eyes, they are the main tool you are using, during sunny day use sunglasses, while driving at night try not to look at the bright lights as much as possible, if your eyes gets tired too early, your head will get dizzy and you wont be able to continue your trip safely.
• If you are not getting in a better shape and your head feels very dizzy, dont drive, stop at a parking place for 45 minutes sleep, it is very refreshing and sometimes even keeps you going for another 12 hours.

P.S. This guide was all written by me, none of the ideas were read anythere else and everything is totally from my experience.

P.S.S. Not sure if this is suitable for women drivers, they are a totally different species.