Lungs and heart
 

im 55 good shape little fat but ok fitness. i find early in my rides going hard is limited by lungs for 1st 5 miles or so.
become breathless...but warmed up its the leggs that go 1st
whats behind this...any ideas.
after good warm up 6 miles then it all works but its the leggs that limit

dunno but on my way home saw a young boy, maybe 8-10 yrs old. climbing a long grade standing. he was going gang busters the whole way. I know if I tried for as long as he was doing it, I would have had a heart attack for sure. age isn't just a number

Sounds kinda normal.

For me, the harder the effort, the longer my warmup needs to be.

you know it in my 30's could hold 170bpm all day trained with HR...now 150 i wanna die....

Ride more, you'll go faster and/or further.

Other than that... that's cycling.

Normal. Your blood vessels become more flexible as you warm up and can then carry more blood. You can speed the process some by doing a couple lowish gear spinups to high rpm and then a couple of hard 1 minute intervals. That'll release the chemicals which help circulation. Legs getting more tired than lungs after warmup means you're using too big a gear.

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after good warm up 6 miles then it all works but its the leggs that limit[/QUOTE]

The warm up is key- have fun.

Warmup is indeed key. For me, every eastbound or northbound ride starts with a hill climb. Southbound rides start with more than a mile of level ground, which facilitates a decent warmup. (I can't go more than about 1 km to the west without getting very wet. :) ) I have learned over the years to use a very low gear and to take that initial cold start climb at an embarrassingly slow pace, which makes all the difference. If I start out too fast up the hill, it takes me at least another 15 minutes to catch up to where I would be following a more gradual start. Warmup is everything!

I feel that way every spring on the first half dozen rides. Don't overdo it at first; you'll likely forget about it after a while, but you do have to push through some pain.

start slow, ease into it. No reason to go full gas right from the start

Unless you are in a race.

was gonna suggest you ride thru the winter, then checked your location ... ;-)

My lungs always seemed to be the most limiting thing for my performance. And it stands to reason since they get CO2 out and O2 into your bloodstream so the muscles can use it.

It's been a 10 year process, but I don't feel as limited by my lungs as I once did. Though they are still probably the thing that limits me most. It's just that I've trained my legs and the rest of me to deal with their limitations. But.... it takes time.

Deep breathes anytime you think about breathing on or off the bike. If you cough after taking several deep breaths, then you need to work on that. I too used to cough after a really deep breath or two. Now I can breath deep and fast for a long time without wanting or needing to cough.

I read that pro cyclist have a very fast respiration rate on the bike. Somewhere on the order of 60 breathes per minute. But I only saw that once. Don't know if I was mistaken nor have I searched further for more info. Anyone else know about that?

That is super interesting to me. I do pulmonary function testing for a living and would be interested to see how long a pro cyclist could keep up that respiratory rate. I would not think for very long. There are physiological limitations above and beyond muscular ability that would prevent a persons MVV (maximum voluntary ventilation) from being abnormally high. l I doubt (although am not sure) that they reach a muscular threshold when it comes to the maximum amount of air that the lung can move.How much higher than a regular Joe is the question.

As a pro cyclist is an elite endurance athlete they should be able to produce a higher MVV than a non elite endurance athlete for sure and would think that their ability to maintain a higher than average minute ventilation would be impressive. That being said a resp rate of 60 is very difficult to pull off. I would be surprised and impressed if even a pro cyclist could maintain that RR for very long. One thing that makes me think it is unlikely is the overall cardiovascular conditioning may render RR's that high unnecessary.

As I said before I could be totally wrong but taking a big breath of air every second for minutes on end is very taxing.

Rdmonster69 Just to be clear, I might have misrepresented the article. It might be that it was only talking about certain short periods when on the bike. Or maybe something else entirely. However they were comparing that the average joe cyclist didn't have near the respiration rate of elite pro-cyclists. The main jist of the article was differences between pro's and us never-will-be-anything-like cyclists. Respiration was just a short mention in it that I recall.

Probably something I read on CyclingNews, CyclingWeekly or VeloNews. Early this year or sometime last year.

I'd be surprised if elite level pro and amateur cyclists breathed in any unusual way unless they were at lactate threshold. I've seen pros chatting almost normally while riding at a pace that would leave me gasping for air and passing out within 5 minutes. And recently Mark Cavendish had a few choice rants for the TV motorcycle crews who were -- possibly deliberately -- influencing or rigging a race to provide a draft for favored riders. Cav was riding very fast to catch up yet still was able to loudly repeat the same complaints to any passing judge or cameraman passing on motorcycles and cars. He wasn't wrong. I was mostly impressed that he could speak loudly and fairly normally while riding so hard. I'd be on the verge of passing out from exertion.

From the perspective of the 50+ forum, I could come up with all kinds of reasons and excuses why I'm getting slower despite working harder to stay fit. But it all boils down to "I'm old, and getting older."

Yeah, I could wish for all kinds of things to delay the inevitable. I had hoped my window of opportunity to continue getting stronger and faster would remain open at least a crack until I reached 65. But, nope. I'm about to turn 64 and I've weakened and slowed dramatically this year after a few consecutive years of steady improvement after resuming cycling at age 57. In 2015 I was starting from nothing, extremely poor fitness, so I knew I could only improve for awhile. And I did... until this year. That window of opportunity closed last year and it won't get any better without PEDs.

That's just the reality of aging. It varies for different people and some folks may continue to improve or at least maintain measurable fitness awhile longer.

81, asthmatic. takes me at least 10 miles to be breathing easily

No worries ..... I would be utterly shocked if a pro cyclist couldn't breathe deeper, harder and faster for a longer duration than normal humans. There real overwhelming advantage is the strength and efficiency of their circulatory system.. You have to breathe far less when your heart is able to deliver mass quantities of oxygenated blood. That's why I said it was really interesting and would be very curious as to the actual physiological make up of a pro cyclist.

Specifically I would love to see a full pulmonary study including
A. Lung volumes via Plethysmography.
B. Airway Resistance
C. Diffusing Capacity using the single breath carbon monoxide test
D. Slow Vital Capacity and Forced Vital Capacity
E. Maximum Inspiratory and Expiratory Pressure
F. Maximum Voluntary Ventilation

This set of tests would basically be a full battery of respiratory muscle strength as well as standard lung functions .I would think the RMS tests would be above normal and the standard functions would not be hugely different. This info may even be out there somewhere. As a clinician I would be most interested to seeing the RMS of an elite athlete is that much different than a regular human.

It's been quite a few years since I've read it, but seems like Phil Gaimon's book "Draft Animals" had some brief sentences through out describing some of the physiological (right word?) things they were tested for when looking at how well one pro compared to another. Most of the book was more an expose and some considered it a smear on certain cyclists. I found it quite interesting just for the info about the life of a average world pro as opposed to a pro that was high fame. He rode back in the days of Garmin Sharp and I think early Cannondale.

Getting back to breath rate, it just seems like HR. Once you have the volume maxed out then a faster rate gets you more. To how much it can contribute might be in the realm of marginal gains. But in racing marginal gains are a part of what makes a difference at the finish line.

Check out the book "Breath" by James Nestor. I thought I knew how to breathe and have never had a breathing problem, but I learned quite a bit from that book.

I had the same problem this spring. Climbing a hill I have ridden up for decades, I realized I was climbing like a fat old man.
So, I rode a lot this summer, lost 10 pounds and attacked the hill again last week.
At that point, I accepted that I ride like an old man, but now I'm slower on the downhills.

I will have to check that book out. Would be helpful if a sports physiologist with a pulmonary background could chime in !!

Wait til you hit 70 or 75 years.......!


It usually takes 4-5mi for my suspended leather saddles to get warmed up. By then I know if the joints are ready to go. Most routes have hills, and the last 2km of every ride is hard - up the hill to our neighborhood, with a 42/24, at the end of 50mi..

if racing wheel suck:p