Alibec

Are you sure that you need to lose that muscle mass? Honestly, I don't think that reducing muscle mass is the best solution in this case. I mean, you can just lose all the fat that you still have, and that would bring a much better result. Besides all that, losing muscle mass won't be that easy. I think you have to eat less and ride more.

Gym123456

As mentioned, don't train for strength, train for endurance. Big weights=big muscles, subject to the person's physiology.

Gym123456

I found that the inactivity caused by dislocating my left kneecap has done wonders for making my leg smaller.

I don't recommend that.

adamrice 

I agree with a lot of other people in this thread that attempting to lose muscle mass is not a good idea. However—especially since you like distance riding—here's something that did cause me to lose muscle mass: I rode the Southern Tier and didn't eat nearly enough for weeks on end. After a certain point, the human body resorts to autophagy. My body was wasted at the end—arms, legs, torso. I had trouble lifting my bike over my head at the end for the ceremonial ocean photo.

I didn't weigh in at the start or finish, but I would guesstimate that my weight went from 160-165 lb at the start to 135 lb at the end. I don't recommend this.

OBoile

This isn't really true. Big weights + Big eating = big muscles is more accurate. Training for strength is generally considered a good idea for endurance athletes. You'll build plenty of endurance riding your bike.

79pmooney

My advice? Very simple - embrace the body and abilities you were given. Find the sports and events that highlight those gifts. I was gifted the body you seem to want, 6' 1/2" and 145 pounds in racing trim. I could climb forever. Not fast enough to crest the smaller hills with the hot shots but after a thousand feet or so I'd be free of them. Now I could have set my heart on being a rouleur or sprinter and spent my racing days having zero fun and very few successes. Or as a rock climber where I have the long reach but am also clumsy and would be by now dead.

So I raced as a pure climber and accepted that flat races were training, race experience and sometimes fun but I wasn't going to place. I'll be 70 next year and just came back from riding Cycle Oregon for a week of climbing every day, doing it on a fix gear so the competition was strictly between me and the hills. I won. Only one hill did I not conquer. Hard, hard, hard. But I was in my element doing what I love and what my body was made to do very well.

DMC707

I went the other way - i'm 5'8 and 195 in racing trim (not now - now im in a struggle to drop about 40 pounds but thats another story ) -- For a few years i tried my best to hang with the pack in local road races. And since i entered literally EVERYTHING , it didnt take me long to point up to cat 2 -- but unless it was a criterium or circuit race, -- i wasnt going to stay with the lead pack and i'd generally get dropped hard enough to have to finish with the Cat 4's (this was before there was a USCF Cat 5 category ) - a few years later, i took a beginners track course at a velodrome and breathed a sigh of relief and thought "I'm home "

79pmooney

I love that on a bike, there is a place for so many of us. And in races, the chess game. How do I beat that guy over there with his very different abilities? My final State Champs, after my accident - flat course. Winning break went with 50 miles to go. No way could I do anything to stop that. Two miles from the finish there was a small rise. I could go there last lap or wait to the town line sign with about 3/4 mi to go but no later. Another guy took off at the hill. Rats. Plan B. Pulled a stealth, going on the glass strewn parking lane and wasn't noticed until I was passing the lead rider at speed. Worked. I got all but the guy who went on the hill and beat a number of riders I'd never beaten in a sprint.

There's a woman here in Portland I consider a sis because I've watched her come back from crash injuries with the passion I had coming back from mine. But on a bike? She's the booster you want for a two person standing start kilo. I stay in the stands with my jaw on the concrete.