TMonk

I think it's easier than you're indicating. For example, I'm going to head out for 3.5 hours later with just a couple VO2 max level efforts on certain longer climbs. The climbs are long enough such that I'll back off the gas before the top. Depending on the route I chose, and the bike, I may have to do an extra lap around the neighborhood, or an extra 5-10 minutes of noodling to get home. That extra noodling is a drop in the bucked compared to the "on" portions of the ride, which is where most of my training adaptations will come from.

Like most people I only have so much time to ride and train, so time and training stress (as a function of power) is how I optimize that for my solo training sessions. My comment was entirely in the context of solo riding. For group riding/racing similar arguments apply, but yeah I agree with you, it becomes more muddled and I think that the bike certainly makes a bigger difference. For this reason I race on a Specialized Venge with latex tubes, deep wheels and all the fast bits, but train on a Giant TCR with box rims that is configured to be a lot more comfortable. It is certainly a slower bike and takes more effort to maintain high speed, but I don't really care about speed in my training, I care about getting stronger with my available time and power output.

MaximRecoil

There is such a thing. As I've already mentioned, cargo bikes (the type which are extended in front to create a large cargo area and are steered with rod linkage) routinely get loaded with hundreds of pounds of weight. And since you've conceded that, you've also conceded the entire point, because differences don't just magically show up out of the blue at some arbitrary weight like 150 or 300 pounds; they are always there with any difference in weight; it's just that they are far more noticeable at the extremes, which is why extreme examples are useful for illustrating a point.

No, they aren't. I've made it very clear that I've been using the term "work" in the physics sense, which is just weight times distance. There are countless examples where more work can be done with less effort. For example, simple machines like levers, pulleys, gears, etc., can result in more work but less effort.

No, it isn't relevant to the point, which is, as I already said, that it's more work, not necessarily more effort. It doesn't matter how much more, because the point is simply "more".

There was no math error at all, let alone "glaring". As I said, the context was the bike itself; how much it weighs and how far it moved. This is like if someone is walking along carrying a 10-pound object, and then he picks up another 10-pound object and he notes that he's now carrying twice as much weight, and you come along and point out that the bulk of the weight that he's carrying is his own 180-pound body weight, so he's not really carrying twice as much weight, he's only carrying ~5% more weight than he was before. He would probably say something like, "Thank you, Captain Obvious," because the fact that you're always carrying your own body weight when you're moving somewhere under your own power goes without saying.

​​​​​Degree of significance isn't relevant to the point, and I'm using the term "different" according to it's generally accepted definition, which you can find in a dictionary.

Eliminating variables in order to isolate the difference from one change isn't even remotely related to a "circular argument"; in fact, it's the only way you can isolate the difference from one change. The world will no doubt be shocked to find out that "all else being equal" statements, which are common throughout academia, have now been declared to be "circular arguments" and/or "begging the question".

What do you mean "I have no answer"? I already answered that. I said it's true, and then asked you what it has to do with anything. Ironically, you have no answer. You pointing that out doesn't make sense because I've never said, nor suggested, nor even hinted that you can't make a bike heavier if you want to. In fact, I pointed out that you can do that when you denied the existence of 500-pound bikes. On top of that, I haven't said anything at all about the benefits of a heavier bike; I've only said that they result in a different workout effect, even if you do the same amount of work with them. "Different" could be beneficial, detrimental, or neutral. It doesn't matter to me because it's not part of my point.

Your concession is noted once again.

Your non sequitur is dismissed.

Your tacit request to redefine the term "circular argument" is denied.

Comical Irony Alert: Part IV

Is that right?

rydabent

After a nice leasurely ride over to the pie and ice cream shop, I take my time setting in the shade eat a nice piece of apple pie heaped with ice cream, on my comfortable trike seat. I was in no hurry to get there, didnt pay one whit of attention to my cadence, or speed. I did tho see probably dozens of things a TdF rider would have missed with his head down staring at his front wheel.

Bottom line both of us are happy.

UniChris

Except that it's not.

It's force times distance. Force only equals weight if you're carrying your bike up a ladder. Which you generally aren't, which is why those several hundred pound cargo bikes can be moved by a human.

Hills are an intermediate situation.

Dubious. It's unclear how you are defining effort but you seem to be forgetting the distance component of work, which is the half of it you did get right above.

Work is something you just can't cheat at - use more leverage and you can apply less force, but you'll also move the load proportionally less against its force, than you move your end of the lever against yours. You can do your work more quickly or slowly but it's still the same amount of physics work. Choose a lower gear and you can mash the pedals less, but you'll have to make them go around more times - either spinning a higher cadence or taking longer to get there (and trust me, the reps of riding low gear high cadence are not free as a repetetive-motion toll on your body)

Do keep in mind that in cycling above relaxed pace, the dramatic rise of air resistance with speed increase is the main energy suck until you get to a climb - and that doesnt depend on weight or even show up in a simple physical machine type analysis.
​​​​
But what about that hill?

Well, what about it. The work done in raising 20 lbs of bike 1000 feet is 20,000 foot pounds or 27 kilojoules.

But that's just 6.4 food calories.

Which is to say two m&m candies. Round up to three as an extremely generous reward for rolling resistance.

genejockey 

"But I came here for an argument".

Trakhak

In the wise words of Archimedes, "Give me a gear low enough and I'll ride a 300-pound bike up a cliff." Leverage trumps weight every time.

In 2005, Czech pro cyclist Ondrej Sosenka bettered the UCI world hour record previously held by Chris Boardman. The bike that Sosenka used to set the new record weighed roughly 50% more than Boardman's had weighed. The reasoning was that the heavier bike (in particular, its much heavier wheels), once up to speed, provided momentum that reduced the fatiguing effect of the constant micro-accelerations required with a lighter bike. Heavier bike, easier workout.

MaximRecoil

Force times displacement, like I already said in post #360. "Weight times distance" is a more common-speak way of saying it.

No, it isn't. A simple machine that offers a mechanical advantage such as a lever reduces the amount of effort you need to expend to lift, say, a 100-pound rock. It always ends up being more work than directly lifting the rock though because no machine is 100% efficient, and those inherent losses mean you won't get the exact mechanical advantage in reality that you get on paper. For example, if, on paper, the lever allows you to lift a 100-pound rock to a height of 1 foot with 50 pounds of force over a distance of 2 feet, in reality, it will require more than 50 pounds of force. If it's a very efficient lever it may be something like 50.001 pounds of force, or if it's a lever that's on a rusty old fulcrum it may be 55 pounds of force, but either way, it's always going to be more, which means more work than lifting the rock directly.

No, I'm not. See above.

Again, no machine is 100% efficient, which means that using a machine that provides a mechanical advantage always results in more work. From my example above, even if it's only 50.001 pounds that you have to apply instead of 50 pounds that it would be on paper, and you have to apply that force over 2 feet of distance instead of 1 foot for lifting the rock directly, 50.001 × 2 is greater than 100 × 1, i.e., more work.

livedarklions

MaximRecoil .
I'm not bothering to go through that word salad of rationalizations of why you have absolutely no argument, but just to spell out why your whole thing is a complete logic fail.

This all started when you made the statement that you cannot get the same workout on a light bike as you do on a heavier bike. That statement was never qualified in any way. It was postulated as an absolute truth. When it's pointed out that there's several things you can do that actually equalize the workouts you get on unequal weight bikes, you announce that for the sake of the argument we're going to assume you can't do those things. So essentially, you're conceding that in the real world, you can actually get the same workout on the two bikes, but in a hypothetical "all other things being equal" world, you can't. Why in wide world of sports would anyone care about that hypothetical world?

Keep in mind, your original statement was about "workouts", not "work". Discussing the quality of workouts without discussing effort is a pretty weird thing to do, almost as weird as discussing the work involved in propelling a bicycle without including the weight of the rider.

So, basically, you're now arguing that if we assume you can't make any other changes to the bicycle or your effort, you can't get the same workout on two bikes of different weights.

Congrats, Captain Obvious!

I get that you want us all to go through why your little quibbles are wrong, but I know when someone is trying to put up the shiny objects to distract from the main issue, which is your basic point is nothing anyone would or should care about.

By the way, if you don't think your refusal to define "significant difference" isn't a tell, you really have no business trying to argue logic.

UniChris

Repeating your mistake right after it was explained won't make it right.

Force, NOT weight. Mixing them up is the start of countless comical errors.

Except that the body is also a machine, and clearly not at it's most efficient when absurdly mashing.

Spinning high cadence at minimum force? Wasteful

Mashing to extreme in too high a gear for the hill? Also wasteful
The peak efficiency of the whole rider-bike system will be somewhere in between.

As for "getting the same workout" all you have to do is ride faster...

seypat

Have we talked about Tour De France workout music yet?

livedarklions

MaximRecoil

Sorry, but the more I think about your rebuttal, the funnier it gets, so I can't resist a couple more points--

I said there is no such thing as a 500 pound bicycle, not "no one can move a cargo bike laden to 500 pounds". I stand by that--go ahead and show us a bicycle that, by itself unladen, weighs 500 pounds. That's a double-dog dare. If the bike starts at 500 pounds unladen, then putting a plausible rider of it on top of it already increases the gross vehicle weight to close to 700 pounds. I'm sure there's probably someone who might do this as a stunt, but so what? This tells us absolutely nothing about the impact of your hypothetical 15 pound bicycle weight difference on the qualities of a workout.

Here's the begging the question fallacy you've committed--
Me and everyone else: "If you do the following, you equalize the workouts"
You: "Assume we can't do those, I win the argument."

Assuming that all things being equal IS question begging if your basic argument is that things can't be made different to compensate for the difference in weight. All I've "conceded" is that if we assume you're right, then you are correct. I don't have any reason to assume this all things being equal has anything to do with reality, so I am not making that assumption, and am very clearly stating you are wrong.

So let's go back to your original argument--
"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."

You've now had to concede that it's resistance, not weight per se, that matters, that gears can alter the relationship of weight to resistance, that hills can do the same, that weight bench logic has nothing to do with bicycle riding logic because a bicycle itself is a set of levers and pulleys that can be adjusted to duplicate the resistance effects of added weight, and that the relevant factor is actually time, not distance. (And that's not even accounting for the drastically increasing wind resistance when you ride at higher speeds). Also, that your calculation of the differences in work between the bikes was all wrong There's literally nothing left of your original argument.

.Have a nice day.

MaximRecoil

You can't. Anything you do to try to 'equalize the workouts you get on unequal weight bikes' will be an approximation at best, and the greater the difference the weight is, the further from truly equal the approximation will be. For example, what's your proposal for trying to equalize the workouts between a 15-pound bike and a 100-pound bike loaded with 200 pounds of cargo?

No, my original statement was about both. I said, "You can achieve the same amount of work on any weight bike, but that doesn't mean the 'workout' is the same."

I haven't discussed the quality of the workout, I've discussed the effect of the workout.

Again, it isn't relevant to the point, given that the point isn't about significance; the point is simply that there's a difference.

It wasn't a mistake, and as I already pointed out, I said, "'Work' is just force multiplied by displacement," in post #360, which was before your attemped "explanation". It is also commonly stated as "weight", which I also already pointed out. For example:

As for your attempted "explanation", it isn't even correct. You said, "Force only equals weight if you're carrying your bike up a ladder." In reality, force always equals weight with regard to work in a gravity environment, though in some cases you would need to add, e.g., a gear-reduction or overdrive ratio into the calculation.

Since it's not an error at all, your non sequitur is dismissed.

That's not an exception. As I said, using a machine to gain a mechanical advantage results in less effort but more work. You claimed that was "dubious". It isn't dubious, it's a fact.

UniChris

No, I didn't.

I said your definition of "effort" was dubious.

Though you persist in making a fool of yourself using a wrong defintion of work. And that practically matters, because as repeatedly explained doing work against gravity is NOT where most of your energy goes in cycling.

That leads you to say things like this howler of ignorance:
​​​​​​
​​​​​​

Overall, your argument is bunk.

What's your proposal for equalizing the workout between the same rider on the same bike on the same route, on two days with different weather? Or between getting enough sleep the night before and not? Or between the light halfway up the big climb being red and with actual cross traffic or not?

When you play a mind game with yourself, that's all you're accomplishing.

Badger6

Buy a power meter, use that to structure your workouts. 250W is 250W no matter how much the bike+rider system weighs, how hard the wind is blowing, and in what direction, how much sleep you had, if you're hungover, or sick. Watts are watts.

MoAlpha

You have certainly made mine by using "begging the question" correctly, counsel, not that I wouldn't expect it of you.

livedarklions

A 120 tooth chain ring and an 11 tooth cog.
Next stupid question.

Hate to break it to you, but everyone's workout routines involve approximations of one kind or another. You really claiming that if there's a rounding error mistake in the approximation of resistance, it has serious or even noticeable impact on the results of the workout?

You went off into lala land with your first statement of the case, and no amount of tap dancing and misdirection is going to get anyone to believe you know what you're talking about.

And by the way, "quality" in this sense is referring to the nature of, not whether it's good or bad. So, whether it's primarily aerobic vs. resistance/weight training. We'll add dictionaries to the list of items you're obviously unfamiliar with.

burnthesheep

Exactly. The poster above arguing into the ground doesn't get this. This is a fundamental concept of physics class that really befuddles a lot of people. Drawing boundaries around systems to analyze.

The physiology depends on your input to the bike, not the output from the bike. The output could be using the bike to power a lift for the weights of a trebuchet in a pumpkin chunking contest. Given the trebuchet's weight could be thousands of pounds, I guess by that poster's logic that would give a better workout.

ksryder

MaximRecoil

More irony from the guy who has conceded several times.

So now you think there's a difference between a bike that's 500 pounds by itself and one that's 500 pounds because it's loaded with cargo? That's funny coming from the guy who said, "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." In any case, there's obviously no difference between a bike that weighs 500 pounds by itself and one that weighs 500 pounds due to being loaded with cargo, with regard to the force required to move it. Also, you said, "obviously, no human being can accelerate a 500 pound bicycle," which is obviously false.

What are you talking about? I never said that such a thing exists. I have no idea whether such a thing exists or not, and neither do you. You claimed that they don't exist and I pointed out that you can add weight to a bike to make it 500 pounds.

You are? Previously you were sure that no human being could accelerate a 500-pound bike, which is funny, because an average guy could do it with low enough gearing.

Yes, it does, since differences don't just magically appear at a certain weight discrepancy.

Even if there were an accurate summary of what I've said (it's not), that still wouldn't fit the definition of "begging the question".

Again, you don't understand the concept of "begging the question". First, all things being equal isn't an assumption, it's part of a hypothetical scenario. Even if it were an assumption (which could only happen if it were regarding a specific real event for which, without evidence, I assumed that everything except one thing was equal), it would only be begging the question if I said that the reason that all else is equal is because everything is equal except for one thing.

In any case, the "all else being equal" scenario isn't even necessary; it just helps to illustrate the point. As I said in my previous post, anything you do to try to 'equalize the workouts you get on unequal weight bikes' will be an approximation at best, and the greater the difference the weight is, the further from truly equal the approximation will be. And then there's the matter of inertia.

Quote:

You've now had to concede that it's resistance, not weight per se, that matters

I haven't conceded any such thing, since that was never a point of contention in the first place.

Quote:

that gears can alter the relationship of weight to resistance, that hills can do the same, that weight bench logic has nothing to do with bicycle riding logic because a bicycle itself is a set of levers and pulleys that can be adjusted to duplicate the resistance effects of added weight

Only to a certain point, since bikes don't have infinite gears, and there's a limit to how steep of a hill that can be climbed on a bike, and even up to a certain point, it will still be an approximation at best.

Quote:

and that the relevant factor is actually time, not distance. (And that's not even accounting for the drastically increasing wind resistance when you ride at higher speeds).

Neither time nor distance has anything to do with my point. The only time I mentioned distance was in an example of work. You are thoroughly confused. You've already conceded that any change to any variable results in a different workout...

"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..."

Yet at the same time you want to argue that you can equalize things between unequal weight bikes. In other words, you're continually contradicting yourself. After your concession above, you logically had nothing left to argue about, yet you continue.

Quote:

Also, that your calculation of the differences in work between the bikes was all wrong

You should petition the, e.g., International Olympics Committee to start adding body weight to the results of squatting. After all, they aren't just squatting that heavy object on their shoulders, they're also squatting their body weight, right? That could change some of the competition results. Of course, for most people, body weight goes without saying, and it's not factored in when discussing how much weight someone has lifted or moved.

No, that doesn't work, even if it were based on real calculations instead of something you pulled out of thin air, because a 15-pound bike doesn't have anywhere near the amount of inertia as a 300-pound bike. Also, just keeping it balanced, both while riding and especially when stopping for e.g., traffic, will work muscles that won't get worked the same with a 15-pound bike.

Maybe you should provide a valid answer to the first question before moving on to the next question.

I haven't made any claims at all about seriousness or noticeability.

Your non sequitur is dismissed.

Not only was there nothing in the context to indicate that you had an unusual (for that particular sentence) sense of the word "quality" in mind, but "quality" is commonly used as an adjective for workout to mean that it's a good workout. Do a Google search for "quality workout" and tell me how many of the results are using "the nature of" sense of the word.

More irony from the guy who thinks "effort" and the physics sense of "work" are synonymous.

It doesn't work that way. Anything you do can be measured in watts. It tells you nothing about which muscles are being worked, and how they are being worked.

You said:

"Dubious. It's unclear how you are defining effort but you seem to be forgetting the distance component of work, which is the half of it you did get right above."

And then you went on to say:

"Work is something you just can't cheat at - use more leverage and you can apply less force, but you'll also move the load proportionally less against its force, than you move your end of the lever against yours. You can do your work more quickly or slowly but it's still the same amount of physics work.You can do your work more quickly or slowly but it's still the same amount of physics work."

In order for that to be true, machines would have to be 100% efficient, which they obviously aren't. In other words, I was right to begin with and your attempted refutation was wrong.

Comical irony coming from the guy who thinks machines are 100% efficient.

Already refuted, but here's another citation for you:

Why do you think that when you calculate work, you use a unit of weight to represent the amount of force?

Utterly irrelevant, i.e., it doesn't change the fact that either weight or force is correct.

See above (in multiple places). Also: Comical Irony Alert: Part II.

Why would I have a proposal for that? I'm not the one who said that things can be equalized.

UniChris

It would seem you've learned nothing since posting that howler about the 15 and 30 pound bikes being equal work over a factor of two difference in distance.

terrymorse 

No. In general, weight and force are not interchangeable. Weight is a certain type of force, and not all forces are weights.

Force: a push or pull on an object that, when unopposed, will change the motion of that object.

Weight: the force exerted on an object by Earth's gravity.

These statements are correct:

The weight of the cyclist at sea level is 600 Newtons (135 lbf).
The cyclist's peak pedal force is 375 Newtons (84 lbf).

Badger6

Dude, that is exactly how it works.

tomato coupe

Who would have thought that this thread could go downhill from where it started?

livedarklions

Too dumb, didn't read.

Badger6