Cycling and Weight Loss "Experiment"

DaveLeeNC

At the end of this I will answer the obvious question of "why in the hell are you doing it this way". In the meantime ....

I am now 62 years old. In my history I have been very fit from an endurance sport perspective and totally unfit. For 10 years or so I ran 2500 miles/year (2:40 marathon PR) and also did a couple years of lower level competitive road cycling (Cat IV kind of stuff). For a portion of my adult life I have done more casual endurance exercising (somewhat fit) and for a good portion I have done very little (this would be the unfit part).

At the beginning of 2011 I found myself kind of 'at the bottom' of my fitness history. Some of this was (really quite minor) knee issues (assuming that I limited running to very soft surfaces) and most of it was lack of motivation to run any more.

At that point I had gained a 40 pounds over my former competitive running/cycling weight. While I had been doing a bit of running, it was not consistent or nearly enough to maintai. n a reasonable level of fitness (or weight). So in mid January I bought a 'spinner type' exercise bike.

My '1st ride' was on 1/27/11. After a 2 week build up (while I was 'fat' by any reasonable definition I was not totally sedentary at that point) I was doing 5 x week rides of 60 to 75 minutes (it varied just depending). I did not make a significant change to my diet (I was not interested in temporary things). I felt like (based on history) exercise was something that could be relatively permanent.

I am posting this to a place where 'competitive cyclists live'. My (limited) experience with these folks is that they work very hard (as opposed to the exercise patterns of the general exercising public). But even by these standards these were 'not easy' workouts. I didn't have a 'power output' measurement. All that I had was RPE and heartrate. And after 4 consecutive days of 'cycling' RPE vs. heartrate was HUGELY different than after a day of rest. But most of this 'cycling' was at an RPE (on a 0 to 10 scale) of a minimum of 6 and average of 7-8 across a 60-75 min workout. My 'best day' was a 75 minute 'ride' at an average of 90% of my LTHR and this included a 10 minute warmup and 5 minute cool-down. There were a couple of days where "I just rode easy" as my body had nothing else in the tank. So be it.

This is not the optimum training pattern other than the fact that my goals at this point are simply weight loss (calories burned) and general fitness.

So now for maybe useful data. I truly believe that if I had done no cycling (or anything else) since the start date of 1/27/11, my weight would be unchanged (6 weeks later) . I have lost 9 pounds. What is interesting is that my HRM (Polar RS200) does its best to guess my calories burned. I had assumed that it was probably overestimating that by about 50%. Using the familiar 3500 calories/pound my HRM tells me that I should have lost 8.5 pounds. Interesting.

FWIW.

dave

ps. OK, now for the why I have stuck myself indoors question. I still have a road bike (a decent, by mid 90's standards Bianchi) in the attic that needs repair after a cross country move in 1999. If this is going to work it will have to be a full time, any season (winter or summer), thing. Since I started in the winter I started with something that I could ride indoors (you could argue that it should have been a TACX or something like that). Right now my knees, which didn't like my running on even soft surfaces, are reacting even worse to my biking (which REALLY surprises me-I am familiar with knee issues but not associated with cycling). So the long term is iffy at this point and the Bianchi repair is on hold.

ColinJ

Dave, are you sure that ...

- You have your cleats set up correctly, with equal 'float' either side of the neutral foot position?

- You have your saddle high enough?

- You are spinning low gears, rather than grinding big gears?

I sometimes get sore knees when walking but rarely when on the bike.

DaveLeeNC

ColinJ wrote:

Dave, are you sure that ...

- You have your cleats set up correctly, with equal 'float' either side of the neutral foot position?

- You have your saddle high enough?

- You are spinning low gears, rather than grinding big gears?

I sometimes get sore knees when walking but rarely when on the bike.

Since the knee pain that I am encountering is not new, it probably isn't a set-up thing. I've had minor osteo-arthritis issues in my knees since the late 80's.

Since this bike has simply a cage type pedal it would not be a cleat thing. My natural inclination (unless out of the saddle) is pretty high rpm (90 feels awkward and slow to me). But experiments with saddle position is probably worth messing with. It is certainly simple and can't hurt (and a good idea).

Thanks for the comments.

dave

stonehouse

Hi Dave.

I've not used static training bikes very often, but when I have I've found them to be quite a compromise over a properly fitted road bike. You may find any or none of the following to be true:

1. Saddle too high/low
2. Saddle position over the crank too forward/backward
3. Knee position over the crank too forward/backward
4. Angle of feet on pedals suboptimal due to type of pedal used

Like you I also have a knee issue and it can be surprisingly small changes that can make a world of difference. Of course it could also just be that you did too much too soon (another failing of mine). It's certainly worth investing some time and effort into the project...

Slack

Do you stretch? Wouldn't surprise me if at your low point, your muscles tightened up, especially the IT Bands.

DaveLeeNC

Thanks for the additional comments.

Just as an FYI - I have made some seat position adjustments which "are promising".

It is not an easy experiment as pedaling (or even running) is virtually NEVER painful for me (unless it is running, or even walking, downhill). What is a problem is that after (for example) sitting in my easy chair for an hour, I LITERALLY look worse than my 85 year old mother (who has one artificial knee and two artificial hips) on getting up and taking the 1st 10 steps or so. I say this because that is exactly what she told me on my last visit to Missouri - "Dave, you look worse than me getting up off the couch". I believe that she was correct.

There is no doubt that 4-6 weeks after starting on the bike I was worse than I have ever been in my life from that perspective. Now a couple of weeks after one seat adjustment things are clearly better.

But cause and effect, even though it clearly exists, takes some patience to figure out. But I am optimistic at this point.

dave

DaveLeeNC

Slack wrote:

Do you stretch? Wouldn't surprise me if at your low point, your muscles tightened up, especially the IT Bands.

FWIW, I am primarily a golfer. The only lower body injury that I have had a problem with (outside of ankle sprains,obviously not a cycling issue) is an IT band problem. It was originally a running issue and is at the hip end rather than the more common knee end of the IT band..

Just for grins here is something related. A number of years ago on a golf discussion board (not unlike this one - just for golf) there was a thread about the 'one piece take-away' (backswing). As it turned out I had been doing a drill that was the absolute opposite of a 'one piece take-away'. It also turns out that this was during a period when I was dealing with an IT band issue which forced me to turn my left foot 'WAY FORWARD" during the swing. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WlwyKxjuns

I do IT band stretches almost every day now (and other lower body stretches as well).

dave

DaveLeeNC

Thought it might be interesting to post a follow-up to this long dead thread (that I started). I'm not sure why I 'drifted away' from this useful place.

In a nutshell in early 2011 I was a former runner with a bit of cycling experience for a couple years in the 90's. I was 40-50 pounds overweight, and bought a spinner bike (age 62 at the time) for exercise purposes. I had a nice El-OS Binachi (mid 90's) in the attic but I was WAY too heavy to safely ride it. I drifted away from a couple of successful months of spinner bike exercise (resolved the knee problems with fit changes) until late 2012, when I decided 'enough is enough' (a weight statement).

Since then I have semi-regularly been on the spinner bike, added an Atkins style diet, and have lost between 50 and 60 pounds (now 5' 9.5" at 155 pounds). AND I revived my EL-OS steel Bianchi in mid 2014 (spinner bike only to that point), ultimately upgrading the wheels and groupset (from Chorus 8sp to Chorus 11sp) - pic attached.

I am mostly a solo rider and rode a 'solo century' in November (week of my 65th birthday). And at this point we are trying a 'one car experiment' where I do much of my local travel (small town, southeastern US location) on either the Bianchi (older wheels/Gatorskin tires) or if the load is heavy or the weather is really bad I ride a borrowed low end Trek hybrid. Only 2 months into this experiment, but ...

Just thought that this update might be of interest.

dave

RChung

Good result.

Nice bike.

keef66

Ditto. Very well done on the weight loss, and on getting the Bianchi back on the road. That's too nice a bike to leave in the loft.

I'm 57 and at the start of the year had an epiphany about the gradual weight gain. 5'6" and 158 pounds, so I was heading into being technically overweight despite a fair bit of cycling. You can always trump exercise with bad diet...

I started on the 5:2 fasting diet mid February and have since lost 18 pounds, stopped snoring, and seen dramatic improvements in my blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels. I find the fast days so easy I'm going to stick with it indefinitely, see where it takes me. Certainly cycling uphill quicker without the belly.