Eric F 

Very cool!! Thank for sharing that.

caloso

That's really cool. A few years ago we were visiting relatives in Chicago and I attended a novice night at the Northbrook Velodrome. One of the riders was an undergrad from IU who was training for the Little 500.

rsbob 

The answer was simple. He was a conceited ass, that refused to follow the club rules no matter how many times we asked him, AND he went out of his way to piss off drivers. He was rude, condescending and was uninvited to what was very clearly pointed out to him as a club ride - not open to the general public because of liability. But he said it was a free country and he could ride where and with whom he wanted and we couldn’t stop him. Luckily he stopped himself. And if you were as condescending, rude and obnoxious as him, I would leave you too. Just desserts for a real jerk.

I do ask any person with a mechanical or flat if they need help. I never go by without asking, so I do have a heart, just not for foul mouthed jerks. Did you really read my post?

indyfabz

I watched maybe the last half hour of this year's race. It was streamed. There was a huge crash with maybe 3 laps left. That resulted in their only being a few teams who could win it. Cutters came in 2nd, IIRC. They were team No. 1 so I assume they won last time. Daniel Christopher (born Dennis Carrelli) is from my home town of Philadelphia.

Snotrub

You're better than me. I would have put him in the ditch long before he had a flat.

roadie77

Others just like to go fast!

rsbob 

Hilarious! You made my day! I will remember your advice for next time.

MaximRecoil

No, you can't. You can achieve the same amount of work on any weight bike, but that doesn't mean the "workout" is the same. For example, if you bench press 300 pounds 10 times, you're doing the same amount of work as bench pressing 100 pounds 30 times, or 50 pounds 60 times, but they aren't the same workout, because the body responds very differently to them. Likewise, riding a 30-pound bike 1 mile is the same amount of work as riding a 15-pound bike 2 miles, but it isn't the same workout, i.e., it doesn't have the same effect on the body. Working with heavier weights tends to increase muscle mass while working with lighter weights tends to increase muscle endurance. Many people incorporate both types of workouts into their routine.

Trakhak

This topic was worked over in a lengthy thread a month or so ago. The more experienced cyclists contributing to that thread pointed out that, because cycling is an aerobic rather than an anaerobic activity, the "heavier bike/harder workout" argument represented faulty reasoning: you can perform as much or as little work as you like on any bike, regardless of its weight. In fact, most of us who have a stable of bikes to choose from do our hardest workouts on our lightest bikes, because they're so much more fun to ride at high speed than the others.

In any event, look around you the next time you're in an area with a lot of bikers. You'll notice that the people on the heaviest bikes are cruising along casually and that those on the lightest bikes are working hard.

MaximRecoil

I didn't say anything about harder or easier, I said it's a different workout, as opposed to the person I quoted, who said you can get the same workout with any weight bike.

"Work" is just force multiplied by displacement. For example, if you bench pressed 5 pounds 100 times you've done the same amount of work as someone who bench pressed 500 pounds 1 time. However, those two "workouts" are still drastically different, because they have a drastically different effect on the body, and they also require drastically different levels of strength to achieve. A child could achieve the former, while it takes a very strong person to achieve the latter.

livedarklions

You are just demonstrating that you don't know anything about bicycles and bicycling. Quit doubling down.
Riding a 15 pound bike does not require half as much effort per mile as a 30 pound bike because the weight of the bike is really a fairly small percentage of the total vehicle weight, which is your weight plus the weight of the bike. Also, bicycling involves momentum, which is why differences in weight actually only have much of an effect on acceleration and hills (more energy needed to ascend with the heavier bike, but the heavier bike will actually go faster downhill, all other things equal). There's no equivalence to bench presses in this regard.

But here's the kicker--you can, at least in theory, equalize the workouts by changing the gears. Want to make a 15 pound bike feel like a 30 pound bike? Accelerate it or climb a hill on it in a high gear.

Basically, though, your statement that it can't be the same workout is essentially meaningless, because that's always true, even if you're using the exact same bike for two workouts. Something will not be equal, whether it's how much water there is in your body, or wind direction, or ambient temperature affecting your abilities that day, or you got a flat that day, or...

MaximRecoil

False, though, ironically, you just demonstrated that you didn't understand my posts.

The last person who replied didn't understand what I said either, which is why he argued against something I never said (i.e., I never said that one was "harder" than the other, only that they're different).

And again you've demonstrated that you didn't understand what I said, despite the fact that I've been typing in plain English. I never said anything at all about effort, so you've just posted a non sequitur. It is half the work per mile, and that's a fact that anyone can easily calculate with the simple work formula.

Why don't you try a 500-pound bike and see what happens? How about a 1,000-pound bike? When you use extremes it's plain as day that the workout effect is different, and it's not as if the effect of the workout just suddenly starts being different once you reach an arbitrary weight difference; a weight difference always results in a different workout effect. As I said in my original post, you can do the same amount of work with any weight bike (assuming you can move it at all; if you can't move it no work is done regardless of how much effort you put into trying to move it), but you can't get the same "workout" on a lighter bike as you can on a heavier bike, nor vice versa, because the body reacts differently to moving heavier weights than it does to moving lighter weights.

This is another non sequitur. I never said that bench pressing is equivalent in any way to riding a bike. I used it as an example of how the amount of work can be the same but the effect of the workout is drastically different.

Only to a certain point, because bikes don't have an infinite number of gears.

Your concession is noted. Also, keep in mind that a workout with a different-weight bike can have a drastically different effect, depending on how big the weight difference is, unlike the far more minor differences that you've listed.

Trakhak

I ride for 2 hours on my 18-pound TT bike. I use an 85" gear and maintain a cadence of 85 and a power level of 225 watts.

The next day, I ride for 2 hours on my 38-pound old Schwinn touring bike. I use a 70" gear and maintain a cadence of 85 and a power level of 225 watts.

The weight of the bike is irrelevant.

livedarklions

Sorry, but this is hilarious! Obviously, my points went completely over your head.

A 30 pound bike does not require twice the work per mile because the primary work you are performing is the transportation of your own weight on the bicycle. So unless you somehow magically double your own weight, the difference is a lot less than double. If light bike plus rider weighs 165 pounds and heavy rider plus bike weighs 180, that's not double the work. I'm amazed that you would actually make this very stupid mistake twice.

Not sure where you think you're going with the 500 pound bike bit. I said that weight was a significant factor in acceleration, obviously, no human being can accelerate a 500 pound bicycle. They also don't exist for that reason. And you know, neither do 1 ounce bicycles because they couldn't support a person's weight. Taking things to extremes does nothing but obscure what's really going on in the realm of the plausible.

I'm pretty sure that you don't need an infinite number of gears to approximate the resistance of a heavy bike with a light bike. Frankly, if that's all you got, it's pretty pitiful.

And no, you have this all wrong, when it comes to bikes, your body isn't reacting to weight per se, it's reacting to resistance, and weight is just one source of many. If you actually knew anything about bicycling, you'd know that the air resistance at higher speeds dramatically increases the work you do per minute. If you care to explain why, in principle, riding a heavier bike more slowly can't produce roughly the same work per minute, I'm all ears. And seriously, if you really want to get an equivalent workout with a lighter bike, attack more hills on it.

Work per mile is an arbitrary choice of metric, and you're about the zillionth person to assert that all else being equal, the heavier bike will require more work per mile. This, like the notion that no two workouts are exactly alike, is what is known as a trivial fact. There's no reason to keep all things equal if you're trying to hit some platonic ideal of the right amount of resistance over time.

Finally, and I didn't mention this one before, if you're dead set on riding a heavy bike, you can always put some weight on the light one. Lightening the heavy bike is an entirely different matter, however.

By the way, some of us, myself included, actually do ride bikes that differ in weight by 100% and also lift some weights. 100% difference in a pair of dumbbells is a much more profound one than it is for the bikes unless you happen to be carrying the bikes up the stairs. What you missed in the comparison between cycling and weightlifting is that a bicycle is a machine designed to maximize momentum, and that means it actually minimizes the effects of weight once you get the vehicle to speed.

MaximRecoil

No, it isn't. Try it with a 75-pound bike, for example, and then a 150-pound bike, and then a 300-pound bike, and so on.

MaximRecoil

That's ironic coming from the guy who already conceded the main point, and also imagined that I said anything at all about effort.

The context is the bike itself, i.e., how much it weighs and how far it moved. In any case, the exact percentage of increased work isn't relevant to the point, which is, the heavier bike for a given distance = more work, not necessarily more effort and not necessarily more power output.

Plenty of people can accelerate a 500-pound bicycle. Just getting it to move at all is acceleration.

They do if you load them up with cargo. Some people who use those extended cargo bikes load them up with hundreds of pounds. Just having someone else on the bike with you can easily add ~200 pounds by itself, and that's been done countless times on bikes designed for a single rider.

Extreme examples demonstrate the point. Are you seriously going to argue that there's a line at which the workout is suddenly different, rather than the workout always being different if the weight is different? If so, where is that magical line? 40 pounds? 80 pounds? 150 pounds? 213.849 pounds?

Of course you do. If you're in the highest gear on the lighter bike, but it isn't higher than the gear on the heavier bike, how are you going to approximate the resistance of the heavier bike? No matter how high of a gear you have on the lighter bike, the heavier bike can always have a gear that's just as high or higher.

That's another non sequitur.

Utterly irrelevant in an "all else being equal" scenario.

See above.

And another non sequitur from you. Not only did I not say that it can't, I said right from the get-go that you can achieve the same amount of work on bikes of any weight. The same amount of work doesn't mean the same effect from the workout, which has been my point the entire time.

That isn't an "all else being equal" scenario.

Work per mile is an arbitrary choice of metric, and you're about the zillionth person to assert that all else being equal, the heavier bike will require more work per mile. This, like the notion that no two workouts are exactly alike, is what is known as a trivial fact.

Your concession is noted again.

The reason for an "all else being equal" scenario is to nip arguments like, "if you really want to get an equivalent workout with a lighter bike, attack more hills on it," in the bud. In other words, what prevents you from attacking the same number of hills on the heavier bike? The same goes for your argument about using higher gears to approximate the heavier bike.

That's true, but what does it have to do with anything?

I didn't miss any such thing.

Mark Stone

Yes, it is. It's very easy, using gears correctly and monitoring HR, to duplicate workouts on bikes that weigh differently. The problem with your logic, as others have stated, is that you're forgetting that the main weight factor is the rider, and you're not including gear usage/cadence in your logic. If there is a 20 pound difference in the weight of the rider/bike, that means you may have to use a lower gear with an identical cadence to get the same workout. But, you get the same workout. If there were such a thing as 150 and 300 pound bikes, you would probably have a point - but an experienced cyclist can find a gear on any of his or her bikes, regardless of their weights, to duplicate workouts.. Trakhak's example of using his TT vs. Schwinn is correct and is "real world" bike science. Bike weight (actual bicycles that really exist, not 300 pound imaginary bikes) is irrelevant when working out.

unterhausen

I think power meters have changed the way we think about workouts. If I set out to go ride 5 hours at a given power level, I'm not going to go ride at 10% more power because I'm on a heavier bike. I'll go slower and shift down more on hills.
My body determines how hard I go, not external factors like bike weight.

livedarklions

"Effort" and "work" are, in this case, synonyms. Who do you imagine is doing the work during a workout?
And yes, the percentage matters very much. If the difference in work per mile is trivial (and it is), then all you need to do to equalize the workouts is ride the lighter bike just a little farther. Your glaring math error suggested you'd have to double the distance to do this.

​​​​​Tell you what, define "different" and we can talk. Some differences matter, others are insignificant. Burden is on you, tell us exactly how much weight produces a significant difference that anyone should care about.

You've now constructed your argument to be if you don't allow any other changes to the workout to compensate, then you get a different workout per mile on a heavier bike than a lighter bike. Again, you'll call this a concession, but that's a trivial truth because there's literally no reason other than to construct a circular argument to assume that people don't adjust their workout accounting for the difference in weight. You conceded this with that "nip in the bud" bit. That was a classic example of the begging the question fallacy. You've constructed the argument so that you're just assuming the conclusion you want to draw. Oh, and going to your nip in the bud example, your argument is that you can't get the same workout on the lighter bike, but why does you CAN work harder on a heavier bike by going up more hills negate the possibility that you could equalize the workouts by riding the lighter bike up even more hills?

And seriously, you have no answer that if you really think that you'll benefit by riding a bike that's 15 pounds heavier, all you need to do is add a 15 pound weight to the 15 pound bike.

So, here's where we are--you are arguing that if the only variable you can alter is the weight of the bicycle, you will not get the same workout. That's literally true for any other factor as well. It's also entirely pointless because it's never true that all you can alter is a single factor.


You not only don't understand how people use bikes, you also don't understand how to construct an argument that isn't completely circular. I guess that's some form of cycling but watching you make a fool of yourself is losing its entertainment value.

livedarklions

Max deliberately constructed his argument to be per mile, not per hour, just so he can avoid the implications of this rather clear example.

Trakhak

In that case:

I ride for 30 miles on my 18-pound TT bike. I use an 85" gear and maintain a cadence of 85 and a power level of 225 watts. Takes me 2 hours. I burn 800 calories.

The next day, I ride for 20 miles on my 38-pound old Schwinn touring bike. I use a 70" gear and maintain a cadence of 85 and a power level of 225 watts. Takes me 2 hours. I burn 800 calories.

The distance is irrelevant. The weight of the bike is irrelevant.

Edit: there is one special case in which the arguments of U.R. and like-minded logicians apply, sort of. That is the case of direct head-to-head competition with other riders on hilly terrain.

Of course, that case also explains why competitive riders ride the lightest bikes they can afford. Riding a heavier bike won't result in a better workout if you burn yourself out trying to keep up and have to limp home.

livedarklions

I'm no expert on this, but I suspect that there's at least a slight difference in the muscles you're working with the tt bike vs. the touring, but that has more to do with the different riding positions than anything to do with weight. So if you're wanting to balance development of your lower body muscles, this could be an argument for n+1.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about this, I really don't worry about such things enough to investigate them.

TMonk

I can chime in here as a competitive cyclist in this modern era: I train by power and time. This normalizes the effect of the bicycle that I'm choosing for a specific workout. When I warmup and find a local open road to do a 5' interval at a very specific wattage, the bike doesn't really change the workout that my body is experiencing.

If you train by distance and speed, then yeah, the bike totally matters. Those type of old school metrics would be more easily reached on my time trial bike versus my MTB for example. But noody does that any more. If you focus on the power your legs produce and the time, it becomes more objective and independent of your equipment.

Sy Reene

These arguments always finally end up with discussion on the semantics of 'training' . A structured training plan that's based on time/effort is all fine and good, if you can manage to identify a route that finishes exactly where you need to finish -- eg. at your car or your home, or you have a support vehicle following that you get in when you're done. Otherwise, you're walking (home or to the car, etc)? Then there are group rides, some might be called training rides. Eg. a local club around here does morning training laps around Central Park -- 4 of them or roughly 24 miles or so. Therefore, it's a fixed distance. Group/club rides are often used in training, but not aware of many of them stopping in the middle of nowhere because someone's stopwatch had counted down to zero.

Fahrenheit531 

There are no gears in bench press. Apples and oranges. Please stop now.