Join in the fun; The Calorie-Count Cycling Club...

Welcome to all who have an interest in anything cycling of any kind.( road, mountain, commuting, stationary, whatever).

This is the place to come to ask that question you have been wanting to ask,

or tell that story about your latest adventure riding your bike,

find out how to use cycling to get in better shape, or anything else you can think of.

So, to start, tell us, what you ride, where you ride and what type of riding you enjoy.

Come back often too check out what's going on and see what's on everyones mind or add your knowledge to the group. 

 

It live in an area that is dry and I have used dry lubes like White Lightning and they seem to work well, but I too now use ProLink and I think it is great. 

Although I don't object to the taste of Power Bars, I wasn't intending to endorse a product, I just meant take some food with you.  If I know for sure that I'm going to be eating on a ride, I will make whole grain toast and put a big glob of honey on it then fold it in thirds and wrap it in plastic wrap.  I'll put a couple of these in a ziplock bag so the honey doesn't ooze out.  Tasty mid ride as far as I'm concerned. : )

Hi Everyone,

I started riding my bike everyday back in the middle of June. It's an old bike, from the late 80s, a mountain bike made by Giant. I really love it, even though it's old. I've had it tuned up several times over the years.

Right now I'm riding about 70 miles a week. Even though it's a mountain bike I mostly ride on the street. I live in classic suburbia so there are quite a few flat patches, or some hills when I want more of a challenge. Right now I'm working on getting my speed up 12 mph. When I first started riding regularly I could only go about 9 mph so I've made some progress. I use mapmyride.com to calculate my speed.

If anyone has any ideas for a newbie working to increase speed I would appreciate it.

Thanks Laura

It's hard to go fast on the road on a mountain bike--it's heavy, it's not aerodynamic, and it's geared low for the trails.

That said, there's certainly room to get your average speed up. Once you have a good base of low-intensity riding underneath you, you can start doing intervals--5 minutes or so at a pace that's just fast enough to make you breathe hard and get your legs to start to burn. 10 minutes recovery. Repeat a few times in an hour ride.

Don't do that workout more than twice per week, and take an easy day or two in between interval workouts.

Thanks so much for that. I'm going out on my ride this morning and will try it out.

Cheers!

I agree with Chris, intervals are the best way to increase speed.  There are several types you can do, the type he mentioned, shorter higher intensity intervals(warm up, sprint all out for 30 sec., rest 30 sec., sprint 30, then recover for 5 minutes, and then repeat), and hill repeats (find a good hill and ride up it several times hard).  You need a good base of riding before doing intervals and don't do them two days in a row.  You shouldn't be trying to go fast every time you ride. 

Hi guys, I am back from my little MIA spell. Still riding away every day but I have not been able to really put in the miles like I was hoping to do.

It has now been over a month since I got the Trek and I guess the guy at the bike shop was right. I have had no lose cables or any problems with the gears. I am quite impressed.

Had to go to the doc yesterday because of the arthritis in my spine. She was soooo impressed with my weightloss and the bike riding. She told me I was insane when I told her I went 50 miles just for the fun of it. She should meet some of you guys, lol!!!!

Do you think I can lose 10 lbs between now and Sep. 11th? I have a big meeting with some of the politicians up here and the department of health. Is it doable? If so, how much riding should i be averaging? My eating habits have not changed - I am stuck around 1500 calories per day.

Jane

Jane: 10 pounds in 10 days is difficult under any circumstances.  I believe that you job and your family keep you pretty active.  In addition you have been riding your bike pretty seriously for several months.  Your diet is already very tight.  So there isn't a lot of room for big improvements.  You would need to get together with Dan and ride 75 miles a day to get 3500 calories per day out of your bike rides.

I would suggest that you might want to start building some high intensity workouts into your routine.  See suggestions for figurethefat above.  Wednesday is my day for high intensity intervals and Saturday is, generally, my day for endurance riding.

Figure: You should look into road slicks for your MB, if you haven't already.

Thanks for the input Tom. It was pretty hot when I went out and although I intended to try the five minute intervals, I ended up sprinting for about 45 seconds, and that was it. Did about 4 of those.

What do you and Chris mean about having a good base of riding? How is that defined? Do you mean ride for a bit before the intervals, or have riding experience?

I usually ride for 45 to 60 minutes, on the road, and paved bike path. Average speed is about 11.5 mph. I go everyday and have been for about 10 weeks. Before this heat wave I was riding to work about 3 times a week (it's only about 4 miles away).

Hi everyone,
I'm fairly new here. I joined CC in July and have been lurking (sounds so naughty) at this thread for a while. I started working out at the gym in the beginning of August and then by the end of the month I was ready to get the ol' Giant hybrid to the bike shop for a tune up. Well, I've been riding ever since and it so good to be biking again. I live in Austin Texas where it is hot and hilly, but very bike friendly. I bike about 45 minutes a day on and off road during the week, and try to get in a 2hr ride on the weekends.
Done blabbing about myself; just wanted to say hi and that I really like this thread. I'll be back often.

You should definately warm up before intervals and cool down after but what we mean by having a good base is that you should be in pretty ggod shape from riding before you start doing intervals.  For example, I hadn't ridden much that last few years so this year I rode for 3 months and logged over 2000 miles before I integrated intervals into my training schedule.  Now I do intervals 2 days a week (usually Tues & Thurs) and distance once (usually Sat.).  The other days I'm out for 20 to 30 miles of easy pace riding.

As noted above, you can only get so fast on a mountain bike but smooth tires will definately help.

7 hours per week for 10 weeks is a reasonable place to start for a base, provided that you don't go out and try to kill yourself on your hard days.

Yes, warm up for 15 minutes before doing intervals, and make sure you ride easy for 10-15 minutes after your last interval, for a cool-down.

In the hard part of the interval, you should definitely feel like you're riding hard. You've gotten it right if you get to the end of the interval feeling like you couldn't have ridden any farther at that intensity. You've gone out too hard if you find that your speed drops off well before the end of the interval. If you feel fresh at the end of the interval, you probably haven't gone out hard enough.

The shorter the interval, the worse it feels toward the end of it. Intervals toughen your mind as well as your body.

All of that said, for your first few sessions, you might dial it back a notch to start, just so that you don't injure yourself. Let your body acclimate to the new workload before you go out and kill it!

Tube & Tire Recycling!! I, the Queen of Flat Tires, am off-the-charts excited about this!

My local bike shop (Bicycle Sport Shop, Austin TX) now has Specialized bins where customers can recycle spent tubes & tires! Specialized will apparently be manufacturing rubber floor mats from the recycled materials. I've written to Specialized to see when/where the mats will be available - I think I could use them in my garage.

Be on the lookout for recycling bins at stores in your area or ask your local shop to take part!

Damn, I thought I had done it right. I guess I should have reread the advice before my ride. I kind of combined the advice. I rode for about 10 minutes, did a 30 sec. sprint, 2 min. recovery. Did five sets of these. But now I see if I was doing the 30 sec. sprint, should have had only 30 sec. recovery then another sprint.

It was hot today, but I was better prepared. I brought a water bottle from the freezer and had it after 30 minutes. I guess I'll do some more intervals on Monday.

Thanks again. And hi allison, I'm new to this thread too.

figurethefat, you were OK with that. If you don't recover enough between hard efforts, then you can't do the next effort hard enough to get what you need out of it.

I typically use double the length of the hard interval as the duration for my rest interval, but then I really go hard during the hard part. This squares with Chris Carmichael's school of thought, though I appreciate that others may have their own opinions.

Sprints aren't going to help your average speed. They'll help your sprinting. That said, an interesting workout is to combine a sprint with a hard, short interval: sprint all-out for 15-20 seconds, then settle into the saddle and ride really hard for another 2.5 minutes. Recovery is 5-8 minutes. This is a "breakaway" interval, where you are training to go off the front of the pack hard enough to get a gap, and then stay on the gas to open that gap up and discourage people from wheelsucking or chasing.

It works, but unless you're strong enough to stay away, or unless you're bridging up to a breakaway group, it's better to bring someone along with you who will share the work. It sucks to be out in the wind, going hard, alone, and few people are strong enough to stay away that way.

In an actual race, be mindful of where your pedals are in the turns. Planting a pedal at 30mph will kill your effort. DAMHIK.

thanks for the feedback Chris. I will try the sprinting with the hard ride afterward. I'm not going to be in any races of course, but it sounds like something I would like.

I rode about 12 miles today, but just cruised. It's nice to have a day and not worry about speed. Before everyday I was thinking gotta get faster. I still went about 11 mph.

Thanks for the road slicks tip, but I don't think I'll be getting any new tires for my old bike. More likely would think about buying a new bike. I don't mind going a bit slower pace right now.

Joe, geez that put things into perspective. I am not even going to try for that - all I would do would be discouraging myself. I will just stick with riding more and more miles. The weight loss kind of happens in the process. Besides it is not my looks but rather my big mouth the senator and the department of health has to worry about on the 11th, lol.

This is completely off topic but I have to share one of my biggest "blonde moments" with you guys. I manage a fastfood restaurant and last Saturday I was filling the ice bin. There were tons of customers in the there. I loudly said "How come our ice is so frozen?" Everything in there came to a complete standstill and everybody started laughing at me. What I meant to say was that the ice was coming out in big blocks instead of cubes, but I guess the words got all twisted in my mouth. now every time I come to work, the employees ask me if I have checked the ice lately. Leave it to me to do stupid things.

Well, I better get to bed so that I can get up bright and early and put some miles behind me on the bike before work.

Have a great holiday weekend everyone.

Jane

I'm still hanging in there, hammering it out in Spin class and taking baby steps on my road bike.  So far, I've ridden it INDOORS in a hallway.  Ha!  But my husband was able to point out my flaw yesterday, and now I think I can get this.  I've always ridden my mountain bikes rather slip-shod, just flinging a leg out whenever I needed to stop.  I'm sort of a bad rider, to tell the truth.  I've always ridden like I did when I was a little kid, doing stupid things like putting my feet on the top tube on smooth descents, etc.  The road bike/clipless combo is not forgiving in any way, so all my flaws come out and make me fall, which in turn, has made me petrified of riding, which makes me tense up, which makes me fall.  Horrible cycle.  But he pointed out that whenever I'm about to stop, I lean to my right, which is the foot I click in first to take off, and NOT the one that I click out to stop.  Once I got a mantra of "Lean left, lean left, lean left" into my head, it was a piece of cake.  (and I haven't mastered taking off with the other foot yet, old equestrian habits die hard)  I've decided that I need a few days of small victories to get my confidence and muscle memory, and I have given myself a deadline of next Tuesday to join the beginner group ride through town. 

Congrats, Tracy.  I habitually use my left foot at stops and dismounts.  I normally step on my left peddle and swing my right leg over the saddle to mount.  I suggest that sometime down the road, when you have gotten more comfortable with the clipless peddles, you practice using your right foot at stops.  You need to prepare for inevitable emergencies where leaning left and putting your left foot down is impractical if not impossible.

Tire pump question.  Seems like its all the little things getting me down.  I ordered a pump with a pressure gage.  The directions are vague.

There are 2 holes in the pump head.  the directions said the top hole is for a  Schrader Valve and the bottom hole is for a Presta valve.

I emailed the company and asked why they didn't tell me I needed a valve.  The offered to send me a new pump head.  I have a pump head! I don't have a valve.

Or maybe I just shove the pump head onto the tire valve?  I've hesitated to do that as I know it might release what air I do have in there.

What model pump is it?  Without seeing it it's hard to know but you probably do just shove it on your tube valve.  My old cheap pump has one hole which is for a schrader valve and I use a presta adaptor in it.  If you are using presta valves you won't really lose air when you slip the pump onto the valve so give it a try.