[ubermonkey]

Nice job!

I'm a cyclist myself, which is one reason I don't have a quarantine side project -- I've just stepped up my (indoor) training. I'm stronger now, measured by functional threshold power, than I was before COVID-19 killed all my group rides.

(Well, for certain values of "stronger" -- I'm MUCH better at shorter intense efforts modeled on the trainer (say, < 90 minutes) but obviously I've lost some fitness for longer efforts (the week before we locked down here, I did an 80 miler with some racer friends).)

What are you using for calorie monitoring? I've found MyFitnessPal to be very useful, mostly b/c it has a huge library of food in it already. My wife used it to alone to lose about 30 pounds; just the act of watching calories in/calories out is super helpful.

[madskdc]

I'm on MyFitnessPal as well, and completely agree with the food library! Though it's a bit of a pain that there's a lot of incorrect data in that library -- mostly typos or mistakes from whomever first input the data.

Nice on getting stronger! I did my first 50 miler last week, and it's got me thinking that I might want to find a group once this whole thing blows over.

[ubermonkey]

Thanks! 50 is the gateway to being a serious rider, so yeah, you're gonna want some cycling groups to play with when COVID is over. And you'll LOVE it.

I live in a big town, so I have multiple overlapping groups, which is a wonderful thing. One club is called "Tap & Pedal" -- we meet at a brewery (there are LOTS in Houston), ride a brisk 50-60 miles, and then relax together after with some post-ride refreshments.

Something I've found about cycling is that my cycling friends are a VASTLY more diverse group than the rest of my social set. I'm an upper-middle-class white 50 year old dude of the NPR persuasion, and our normal social set reflects this.

The cycling crowd is all over the map in terms of ethnic background, education, level of political engagement, income, and age. It's only through that that I really even KNOW 30-year-olds (or 65+ year olds).

The big tent pole for cycling organization in Houston is the annual Multiple Sclerosis ride every spring; if there's something like that where you live, it'd be a great way to find a home group.

[mwizzle]

Why do you say 50 is the gateway? Single ride or weekly mileage?

[ubermonkey]

In a single ride. I think there's a psychological barrier there that some people have trouble with. 50 also means more than 2 hours in the saddle, so you're moving in the direction of serious mileage and well past the 10-20-30 mile easy rides.

[_x5tx]

what do you use for indoor biking? an actual indoor bike or just a regular bike with some kind of adapter?

[nantes]

I have/use a Saris Fluid Trainer I picked up at a local REI with my street-tire equipped mountain bike. I should really be using it more, but there's precious little space left anyway.

[ubermonkey]

Most serious cyclists have an indoor trainer device that attaches in some way to a regular road bike. This sounds like a hassle if you only have one bike, and it kinda is, but the thing about cycling is that you eventually have more bikes.

So for me, my old bike is more or less permanently mated to the trainer, which is a Wahoo KICKR Snap.

Trainers used to be devices to impart resistance - a heavy flywheel cranked down to your rear tire, essentially - with no intelligence attached. Crank it down harder for more resistance.

In the last several years, that's changed, so the dominant type now is a "smart trainer" that has the ability to dynamically adjust the resistance when driven by an external computer, and measure actual power output.

This is good because cycling training is (to drastically oversimplify) generally predicated on various types of intervals all expressed as a percentage of your maximum 1-hour power output ("functional threshold power," or FTP). Say, a warmup at 50%, then alternating intervals of 2 min at 180% and 3 min of 75%, or somesuch.

With a smart trainer, I can just keep my cadence constant (usually about 90-95 rpm) and the trainer will get easier or harder as indicated by the training plan's instructions from whatever device I'm using to drive the trainer (I use an iPad; some folks laptops). I don't have to do anything to the bike or the trainer to adjust the resistance; it's handled for me. This sounds small, but it's really pretty great.

This intelligence also allows for "virtual cycling" routes in apps like Zwift (Win/Mac/iOS/Android), which model real-world locations for you to ride through. The trainer gets harder as you go uphill, and easier as you go downhill, and it factors in your weight and power output to model speed. It's pretty neat (and immersive enough that, even with an iPad screen, I have found myself wanting to lean into turns). There are even races in Zwift (I raced last night, in fact).

Since cycling as a hobby/culture is really tied to the idea of the group ride -- an activity that has been pretty seriously quashed by COVID -- you can imagine that smart trainers and Zwift subscriptions are selling like HOTCAKES right now.

There ARE now full-scale dedicated trainer bikes designed to do all this (Wahoo makes one), but it seems to me to be kind of a rich-man's-folly approach. (Wahoo's model is $3499.) You can do so much with your old bike (free, because you already have it) and a trainer (Wahoo's line starts at $500) that I'm not sure I see the point.

Tools like Peloton really address a different market, i.e. people who really love spin class. That's a good workout, but it's not a cycling workout; Peloton bikes in particular also lack the ability to dynamically adjust resistance, so you can't get the same kind of immersion over a virtual course or hands-off interval workouts. They're neat and lots of people love them, but it's a different market. OTOH, if you just seek a nice indoor fitness device, they might be a good all-in-one option.