YeaWhatever's cycling thread

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Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

YeaWhatever wrote:

Maximum heart rate: 178
Heart rate 15 minutes after workout: 58

Damn, that's some good recovery time there, mate Shocked

YeaWhatever wrote:

3 seconds seated then 5 seconds standing climb

I should try something like that, I spend about 99.9x% of the time seated when I ride, I only get out of the saddle to go up the couple of small ramps along the cycle path just to keep my speed up. I shall endeavour to get out of the saddle more often.

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:24 am

He's got a chapped butt! Razz

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:02 am

Scam Patroller wrote:

I should try something like that, I spend about 99.9x% of the time seated when I ride, I only get out of the saddle to go up the couple of small ramps along the cycle path just to keep my speed up. I shall endeavour to get out of the saddle more often.

For every hour on the bike, I try to spend about 20 minutes out of the saddle. I would never race like that though. You expend about 10% more energy doing that but it's needed to get ready for this Fall.

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 1:45 pm

My commute to work...

The weather is finally decent enough today to ride outside.
Temp: 29 deg. F
Wind: 0 - 5 MPH (Excellent)
Skies: Sunny

My commute to work is only 11 miles, but it is city riding. For those of you the ride a lot in the city, you may appreciate the effect of constatly starting and stopping. Sudden accelerations make for a more uncomfortable ride instead of a steady pace over a long period of time. Then of course, you have to deal with crappy road conditions and traffic.

The road conditions in the city I live in are utter crap. You are constantly dodging massive pot-holes or buckles in the road that can seriously screw up your wheels. Fortunately, after a while, you start to remember where the trouble spots are and you are able to handle it a bit better.

Traffic, oddly enough, is not as big a problem as you would think during rush hour. With so many cars on the road, they are only going as fast as I am, and in many cases, slower than I am. The only pain in the butt are the city buses which take up way more than their share of the road. They are way too slow and, of course, stop about every block, causing traffic to back up all over the place.

The trek to work is somewhat downhill. As a result, it is the easier of the two rides that I take to or from work.

When I go to work, I have a back pack on. It contains my work clothes, and food for the day. It weighs about as much as the bike, sometimes more. But since I consider commuting to and from work part of my workouts, I do not care about the added weight. To me, it is the equivelant of wearing a drag suit while swimming (you competitive swimmers out there will know what that is).

When I keep track of the stats of the ride, I include stopping time when calculating everything. My bike computer has a setting that can ignore stopping time, but I have decided not to use that feature. When I get to the Tejas 500, stopping time will be included, so why bother tricking myself while I am working out?

Today's trip...
Total Distance: 11.01 miles
Total Time: 37:57
Avg Pace: 3:26/mile
Avg. Speed: 17.4 mph
Max Speed: 32.6 mph
Total Calories: 671
Avg. Heart Rate: 153 bpm
Max. Heart Rate: 172 bpm
Total Ascent: 428 feet
Total Descent: 535 feet

The ride home after work is an extended route. It is 37 miles and largely uphill.

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:20 pm

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

YeaWhatever wrote:

I have a back pack on. It weighs about as much as the bike, sometimes more.

YW, out of interest, how much does your bike weigh, I'm guessing around 8 - 10 pounds? My mountain bike weighs about 38 pounds, and then a bit more for the lights etc. If we had any decent roads around here, I would get myself a road bike to complimemt any off road cycle path riding I do.

YeaWhatever wrote:

Today's trip...
Total Distance: 11.01 miles
Total Time: 37:57
Total Calories: 671

What amount of calories do you eat in a day? I'm looking at this with respect to my losing weight, I not currently eating a lot, for example, yesterday, I ate 3 small bananas, 2 sausages with 2 slices of bread, 2 small chocolate wafer biscuits and 2 slices of bread with peanut butter on them (edit: also had 3 slices of lightly butterd toast), people say a bloke should have something like 1500 - 2000 per day, I'm not sure how may calories I am burning when I'm only doing rides from say 6 - 12 miles each time.

I note you did 11.01 miles in 37 minutes today and burned 671 calories, I did 7.90 miles in 37 minutes last night, how comparable would my calorie loss be compared to yours, considering my bike is much heavier, any idea?

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 2:46 pm

AWW part of my post disapered but it sead.
YW, you and SP are a inspration to me. I am very proud of you two, and its looking like im getting ready to take up cycling again, as soon as the weather lets me, oh ya, and buy another bike. keep up the great work.

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 3:08 pm

My bike weighs about 14-15 pounds I think. I have made a lot of modifications to it that have actually added some weight (more rugged wheels, tires) and added areo bars. I suppose I should weigh it to be sure. Maybe it's more than I think.

38 pounds? Man, that is a beast. No wonder you are so tired when you're done Laughing

My diet entirely depends on what I am going to be doing for the day. But since I burn about 1200 calories for every hour I ride, I try to eat at least that much for every hour ridden. I also lift weights at least 3 days a week and swim about 21,000 yards per week (that number will be coming way down). So, I suppose on an active day, I consume about 4-5K per day.

I am 6' 1" and weight 167 pounds. I never vary from that by more than a pound or two. I do not want to get too light just yet. It makes working hard impossible. But I also do not want to get too heavy either. About a month away from the race, I will probably drop an additional 8-10 pounds. Do not let the light weight mislead you. I can still bench press 235 pounds.

Calculating your caloric expenditure is not an exact science. I have noticed that different sources tell me different things. But I can tell you that age, weight, height, and gender are all taken into consideration. Have a look at this link to calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate. http://www.shapeup.org/interactive/rmr1.php This is the number of calories that you need to do nothing more than lay there on your butt. Next, you need to calculate what you burn for various activities. Go to http://www.fitday.com/ This will help you calculate what you are buring for your biking. Your weight, speed and duration are all used to calculate calories burned. At this point, it is simple math. If you burn more than you take in, you will lose weight. It will take a 3500 calorie deficit to lose one pound of fat.

Baiting Guru Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 11857 Location: UK

Cheers YW, I will register on the fitday site when I get back from my ride, I'll be going out soon.

As the weather is nice and sunny with little wind, I'm going to try riding a fair bit further today than I have done before, my furthest ride to date is, 11.76 miles.

Today I want to go to Bexhill to where my 5 mile marker is, them come back 4 miles to where the pebble path starts, then do the 4 miles back to the 5 mile marker again, then 5 miles back home from there, about 18 miles all together, should be interesting Very Happy

I did check the first link you posted for my metabolic rate, I'm 5'9", 41 years of age and 182lbs, for that, it says:

Quote:

Your resting metabolic rate is 1714 Calories per day

I'll read the rest of that site later.

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

Hmmm. Food for thought....

1 hour of walking 240 kcal
1/2 hour of jogging 240 kcal
1/2 hour of cycling 200 kcal

Cook dinner, Wash dishes and Walk dog 212 kcal
10 hours of lazing around reading 240 kcal
5 hours of baiting 320 kcal.

So ten hours of lazing around, five hours of baiting, plus minimal domestic chores consumes 744 kcal, the equivalent of nearly two hours cycling, an hour and a half jogging or over three hours walking.

Wink

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 6:05 pm

YeaWhatever wrote:

The ride home after work is an extended route. It is 37 miles and largely uphill.

Uphill both ways huh? You sound like my grandfather "walking to school in the snow uphill both ways".

This thread is really fascinating. It's interesting to see what active people actually do for their training.

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 6:34 pm

Wow, averaging 17 plus in city traffic? That's better than what I do in a car! Looks like you are on your way.

My guess is that your bike weighed about 17 from the factory. Add on another cage, lights, pedals, saddle bag, heavier wheels, inflator, tire irons, tube and patches, its pushing 19. The weight of the bike within reason does not matter. Its the engine.

Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 6:54 pm

Connie L. Gus wrote:

Wow, averaging 17 plus in city traffic? That's better than what I do in a car! Looks like you are on your way.

Man, I hope so. For the 500 mile race this Fall, I want to average 15 mph or better. That should easily qualify me for the Race Across America. A 15 mph average will mean that I do each of the 25 laps in 1 hour and 20 minutes. Seems easy if you just look at the '15'. But it's the 500 that is a bit scary at the moment. If I average 15 mph, that would be a finishing time of 33 hours and 20 minutes. That is a long time to do anything, much less cruising on a bike.

In all honesty, I feel like I could go the distance right now. But doing it all with the 15+ mph average is the unknown at this point.

I've got about 26 weeks until the race. I am really going to do a lot of hill training along with slower, long rides. I am going to try to do at least one century ride per week soon.

I found a perfect 20 mile, somewhat rural, loop within 7 miles of my house. The loop is included in my extended commute from work. There are about 7 or 8 traffic lights in the loop. If I can see that there is no traffic, I blow right through them. But if I do have to stop, they tend to be longer lights Evil or Very Mad

My typical average speed for the loop is around 18-20 mph. The biggest factor to deal with is wind. Being out in the sticks in spring makes for some rather windy conditions lately.

The real nice thing about this 20 mile loop though, is that it gets me used to what 20 miles should feel like. Again, the race this fall in on a 20 mile loop. Familiarity with that distance should become an advantage at some point. Plus, if something goes wrong with me or the bike while doing one of my longer workouts, I don't have to call someone on my cell and tell them that I am 70 miles away, "come and get me". Most people are happy to help if you are less than 20 miles away.

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:31 am

Thanks for the info!

I almost went shopping for a bike last week and I put it off. After reading this thread I'm glad I did.

Both of you have inspired me. Wink

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:17 pm

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. The commute home last night is a case study in not getting what I wanted. What did I want? A fairly comfortable ride, calm weather, etc... What did I get? Roughly 2 hours of misery.

Downtown (where I work) is on Lake Michigan, as far East as you can get without being in the drink. Last evening, the wind was coming directly from the West at 10-20 miles per hour Evil or Very Mad

Heading West, from downtown with all of the city traffic, to the 20 mile loop that I train on has about 650 feet of climbing. Combining traffic, wind, and the climb, made for a rather slow ride. I averaged only 14 MPH.

Now, a 14 mile average for the first leg of the ride home sounded pretty bad to me at first. But considering that it has 650 feet of climbing in only 13 miles made me feel pretty good. The entire 20 mile race loop in Texas has about 900 feet. If I can average 14 MPH while climbing in Texas, I will be in great shape, because the downhill sections of the course produce speeds in excess of 40 MPH. Remember, my goal is to average 15+ mph over the course of the race.

By the time that I got to the 20 mile loop, my back and butt were pretty sore from wearing that stupid heavy backpack. From now on, I need to plan much better and travel much lighter. The pain in my back was so distracting, I had a hard time caring too much about my speed through the loop. I just wanted to get through it. So I relaxed a bit, sat more upright, and pedaled at about 60% of my best effort. My average speed on the loop was only 16.4 MPH. It is usually around 19 on a normal day.

Weather Conditions

Temp: 46 deg F.
Wind: West 10-20 mph Evil or Very Mad

In my face most of the time!

The Numbers

From work to the loop
Total Distance: 12.39 mi
Total Time: 53:10 min
Avg Pace: 4:17/mi
Avg Speed: 14.0 mph
Max Speed: 23.2 mph
Total Calories: 707 cal
Avg Heart Rate: 161 bpm
Max Heart Rate: 174 bpm
Total Ascent: 646 ft
Total Descent: 445 ft

The 20 mile loop
Total Distance: 20.03 mi
Total Time: 1:13:09
Avg Pace: 3:39/mi
Avg Speed: 16.4 mph
Max Speed: 29.9 mph
Total Calories: 1142 cal
Avg Heart Rate: 144 bpm
Max Heart Rate: 164 bpm
Total Ascent: 408 ft
Total Descent: 398 ft

The short ride home
Total Distance: 2.87 mi
Total Time: 9:54 min
Avg Pace: 3:27/mi
Avg Speed: 17.4 mph
Max Speed: 27.1 mph
Total Calories: 168 cal
Avg Heart Rate: 139 bpm
Max Heart Rate: 152 bpm
Total Ascent: 77 ft
Total Descent: 97 ft

ALL COMBINED
Total Distance: 35.28 mi (actually, it's 37 miles. I did not have the computer on for the first or last mile)
Total Time: 2:16:14
Avg Pace: 3:51/mi
Avg Speed: 15.5 mph
Max Speed: 29.9 mph
Total Calories: 2017 cal
Avg Heart Rate: 150 bpm
Max Heart Rate: 174 bpm
Total Ascent: 1132 ft
Total Descent: 940 ft

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 1:47 pm

It must have been quite tough climbing down that 192 ft ladder with the back pack on after you got home

Quote:

ALL COMBINED
Total Distance: 35.28 mi
Total Time: 2:16:14
Total Ascent: 1132 ft
Total Descent: 940 ft

Sorry YW I couldn't resist - attempts at humor are how I try to deal with the inferiority complex I get from physically superior humans.

And the idea of doing 40 mph+ on a pedal bike.... Shocked

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:06 pm

@YW - Nice computer. What do you think of the Garmin Edge 705 ? (A little pricy for me) I need to invest in a heart rate monitor. I have a basic Sigma BC 1106

Currently I'm only doing about 12 miles a day (about 1 hours worth of riding)

Nice bike to. A good friend of mine just completed the "Argus" bike race in South Africa. It is about 80km pretty mountainous he drops his saddle ever so slightly he tells me it helps with the comfort for long rides!

Best of luck with your quest. Us beginners will sit here on the sides and spur you on! Laughing

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:12 pm

Yes, a $540+ bike computer is a bit pricey for me too, but I sure would not mind having one. Looking at the specs though, it does not seem to do a whole lot more than my $200 one. The one thing that I do not like about mine is that the battery only lasts a maximum of 10 hours. I was looking foward to saving the entire 500 mile race data. That will not be possible for me though. The race will take more than 30 hours. Crying or Very sad

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:17 pm

@ Old # 7 - YW did say he forgot to turn on his computer right away. Man, what a computer. Everyone I know logs their mileage except me. All I do is not reset my $8.87 odometer. You are right. I look at YWs effort and realize I am really not worthy of posting on this thread.

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 2:23 pm

This is awesome! I'm going to show my son. Keep the post going, as I'll never do something like this but will enjoy living vicariously through you.

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 6:49 pm

@YW - I started cycling about a month ago - got myself a Dawes

It weighs around 28 pounds - I have put on SHIMANO PD A 520 ROAD CLIPLESS PEDALS

Apart from the pedals I have added a pump and a <strike>whiskey</strike> water bottle holder.

Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:28 pm

Just finished my lunch-time workout.

30 minutes of leg weights
Leg press - 200 pounds - 20 reps
Leg press - 212.5 - 20 reps
Leg press - 225 pounds - 18 reps
Leg press - 237.5 pounds - 16 reps
Leg press - 250 pounds - 13 reps
Leg press - 262.5 pounds - 8 reps
Leg press - 275 pounds - 4 reps + 8 reps @ 225 + 5 reps @ 175
Leg press - 275 pounds - 3 reps + 6 reps @ 225 + 7 reps @ 175

Hamstring curls - 100 pounds - 20 reps
Hamstring curls - 110 pounds - 18 reps
Hamstring curls - 120 pounds - 16 reps
Hamstring curls - 130 pounds - 14 reps
Hamstring curls - 140 pounds - 12 reps

30 Minutes of Stationary bike
Did the following 10 times
1 min - low resistance @ 110+ rpm
1 min - mid resistance @ 90+ rpm
1 min - max resistance @ 55+ rpm

Resting heart rate prior to workout: 58 bpm
Maximum heart rate during workout: 183 bpm
Resting heart rate 20 minutes after workout: 59 bpm

I still have this evenings workout to do yet and it's snowing again. I think that I might do the spinning class at the health club that I am a member of. I am not sure what kind of workout is planned (sprint, climbing, pace, etc...) but the female instructor is about the hottest thing that I have ever seen. She makes riding a trainer worth while. Thumbs up

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 2:15 am

I just got back from a 90 minute spinning class. My God, the instructor is one of the nicest looking women I have ever seen. It certainly is more intersting being on a stationary bike in such conditions.

I cannot remember exatly minute by minute what we did but it was entirely a climbing session. I was not sure how much I had left in my legs after all of the weights earlier in the day but I seemed to have more than enough.

There was a point where we were out of the saddle for 15 minutes straight at a very high resistance. The first 2 or 3 minutes were quite uncomfortable, but then I just closed my eyes and started to visualize racing down a country road, passing one after another of my competitors. Once I was in the right mindset, it no longer hurt at all. In fact, it was a great feeling, totally relaxing. About 10 minutes into the climb, I peeked at my heart rate monitor. I was at 178 bpm. My max is 183. Yet, I felt no pain whatsoever. Pretty darn cool. I felt like I could have gone all night like that.

It's snowing like crazy outside right now. It is doubtful that I will be riding outside tomorrow, but if I can, I plan on riding to work, and then taking my extended ride back home after work. We'll just have to see what the conditions are in the morning.

Posted: Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:36 pm

Too much snow/ice on the roads today for outdoor riding. Will probably do a couple of hours on the trainer tonight while watching American Gangster.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 28 Mar 2008 Posts: 4

American Gangster! Apart from the first five mins the movie is really good. Enjoy.

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