I decided against doing Wuling for various reasons (didn’t really want to do the multiple 5-8 hour rides to prepare for it and I’m really missing triathlon racing- can’t do both with my schedule). As a result, I reduced my cycling by quite a bit in the last two months and I noticed these two things.
First of all, I am about 1-1.5 kilos heavier and I can’t lose it no matter what I do. I’ve thought and thought about this and I’m convinced that cycling up mountains is the only thing that has changed. The conclusion I draw from this is that cycling involving mountains is great for weight loss. I’m still exercising quite a bit. Just not cycling up so many hills anymore.
Secondly, cycling up mountains I see helps my knees out. I have increased my running mileage and the pain in my right knee has come back. I’ve noticed that when I go up a mountain (like this morning), the pain subsides quite a bit and this lasts for a few days. So cycling up mountains is good for your knees in my opinion. I have no idea why this would be (kind of like strengthening your quads for knee issues maybe?)
I don’t know. It’s possible that with more swimming, I have gained some muscle. But that’s a lot of muscle for such a short period and for doing mid and long distance exercise. Muscle gain in my legs from running I guess is possible, but the reduced hills when cycling would seem to offset it.
Obviously I don’t know, either. I’d probably see about a simple water tank test (for body fat %), though, just for clarification. Would give you a baseline to work from when (if) you run into this kind of situation again.
No. I lost 15 kgs over a period of two years through cycling. Put 15 kgs back on once injury ended my illustrious career. It’s pure fat, it’s love handles, it’s beer gut, it’s man breasts. And it’s only hill climbs that’ll burn that off. Prolonged or repeated high intensity efforts burn off fat. 5 hours going up and down bergs in summer at maximum engine capacity guarantees weight loss.
I’ve found this to be true. Long rides in general, with adequate intensity thrown in (provided by the hills) will lead to weight loss.
It has become trendy among some cyclists to claim that long endurance rides are not necessary, and that riders should just do HIIT training. But for the average untrained person who wants to be fit and competitive, or for the fatty who needs to lose weight, I’ve seen that it is essential to do a lot of long rides consistently over time to drop weight and build endurance.
Even the highly trained athlete who quits doing long rides will lose some competitive edge and gain weight unless they are obsessive about controlling food intake.
The way I see it: cycling is different from other physical activities in that the athlete can control the amount of effort while the body weight is supported by the bike. When running, the muscles must support the pounding of the body weight with every step. While swimming, the muscles must produce consistent effort or else a lapse in effort could result in sinking underwater.
But when doing long distance cycling you can choose an easier gear, you can coast, you can modulate your efforts. This results in exercise of longer duration, a longer burn, more calories burned (regardless of what theory of weight loss one subscribes to), and less muscle and joint damage then running would cause allowing the cyclist to go back out and do it again soon.
Overall effect: more consistent or more pronounced weight loss.
I agree with just about everything you wrote, but this is a bit different for me. On every mountain I’ve been on in and around Taipei, I’m going very hard for at least half of the mountain. I might be in the range of 50-100% max heart rate over the course of the mountain road, with some sections being so difficult that it is impossible to get under 80% max heart rate unless I stop- just continuing up the mountain at any speed is good enough to make me have to work really hard.
But maybe this is different for some people. I’m not the best on the mountains and not a naturally light person (about 86 kilos now and that’s after some weight loss). Anyway, the mountains are great and I can’t imagine not taking advantage of that while living in Taipei.
I think that it would be a good investment to research HIIT and how it can help with sustained effort, such as in long climbs on a bike. A great place to start is Joe Friel’s book “Fast After 50”. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TG8N21Q/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
Start doing intervals on gentler roads or even riverside trails when the air is OK, then gradually move up to steeper and longer climbs. Don’t overdo it; make sure your intervals are short (less than a minute) but hard, don’t do more than eight or ten to start, and give yourself at least two minutes in-between to recover.
In any given week two of my five morning aerobic workouts are HIIT, and the other three are LSD (Long Slow Distance, at about 70% max. heart rate). That’s roughly the mix you see used by coaches of elite athletes. It’s tempting to up the HIIT percentage, but the risk is that you simply exhaust yourself. I can tell if I start to fall asleep at work. Plus, the LSD workouts are critical to building stamina.
The situation is different if you have limited time for aerobic workouts. If that’s the case, then you should consider more higher-effort workouts, instead of dividing them into HIIT/LSD.
I bet you’re familiar with this stuff, with your experience in triathlon, so never mind if I’m preaching to the choir.
My other advice is to find a good running store and do a gait analysis. The issue may not be so much running vs. biking, but your personal running gait vs. cycling position. And if you haven’t looked into Hoka One One or similar high-cushion shoes yet, they’re worth trying. That’s the only way I can run on asphalt or concrete.
I don’t mind. I have heard about some of what you wrote, but I never tire of discussing this stuff. The cool thing about mountains on a bike is that you have a good mix of what you discuss built right into the road. Also, getting to the top feels great, and it’s a good metaphor for life!
I have switched to a more cushioned shoe. This is after a few years on Newtons getting my running form adjusted a bit. Hokas will be my next purchase. I now know where they’re sold.
Yeah, and sometimes you have to leave the tech and data behind and just do a fun ride to enjoy the bike, the road, the scenery, companions and the buzz of working hard. As I get older I pay more attention to all those things, and am grateful to the weather gods.
Speaking of Strava, I just recently realized that I get ranked in various sections of road that I bike. Going up the cemetary road from Liuzhangli, I was ranked around 700th place. Is that good or bad? It’s pretty bad if there’re fewer than 1,000 people on Strava for that section. Mind you I just saw this after the ride when I logged on to my computer so I wasn’t trying for a personal best. (I usually just use my phone to log on/off Strava and post the result on FB.) But now that I find this feature, I’m goaded!
Click on the segment. Then you will see the record of all your efforts on that segment. Then…the leaderboards section with “All-Time,” “This Year,” “Following,” etc. I even bought a membership (curiosity get the better of me) so I can also see ranking for my age and weight groups. Beware. This is the beginning of addiction for some people. But I guess it’s all good.
By the way, does anybody know why some people don’t have some segments? If you’re using a Garmin and transferring everything by Bluetooth to your Strava, is it possible that some segments aren’t appearing for these folks? That’s the only thing I can think of. I’ve got a segment I watch on a road and clicked on someone I’m following to see how he does on it and noticed that the segment didn’t appear on his record for his ride up the same road. Hmmmm.
There’s only 800 people on that segment so yeah…need to up your game. I’d target around 15 mins for that, that’s a reasonable effort. My best is around 13.
13th place or 13 minutes? I ride a mountain bike so it’ll be a bit hard to significantly improve my time, but at least now I know that it’s a game that I can up.