11
Short answer, there is a health risk from increased intake of polluted air, but the health benefits outweigh the risk. Funnily enough, you are exposed to a higher concentration of pollutants driving, but for a shorter amount of time and at a lower respiratory rate.
Overall, air pollution exposures experienced by car drivers were modestly higher than those ...
10
Fat loss will come from eating less calories you consume, and the easiest way to create a deficit is through your diet. The biking is a great supplementary activity, but it will be extremely difficult to add mileage or begin additional jogging without consuming more calories to make up for those activities. Adjusting your diet while maintaining your current ...
8
Generally, given the mechanical efficiency compared to human efficiency, you can multiply your watts x 4 and get your calories burned. It's going to vary some, as some people are more efficient than others, but that is a good way to get pretty close. It's based on both human and mechanical efficiency of the bike being around 20-25%.
The math:
200 watts at ...
8
Sitting becomes a problem when it translates into a pattern of (sedentary) behavior that often results in a lack of regular exercise. More to the point, most of the studies define sitting as a prolonged behavior with little to no movement (eg. Watching tv, working at a desk, etc.). And, to confuse things more, a relatively new study suggests that sitting ...
7
What does it mean to bonk or hit the wall during a run or a bike ride?
In endurance sports such as cycling and running, "hitting the wall" or the "bonk" is a condition of sudden fatigue and loss of energy which is caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles.
Can this can be a fairly serious thing, so what are the ...
7
In short, you can't target fatloss.
You can however make some healthy changes to your life, most of which you've already done by the looks of it. Most people have a hard time losing fat on their abdominal area. The only thing you can do is keep living healthy, tracking caloric intake, making sure you get enough rest and working out regularly.
Things like ...
7
There's a lot of quality peer reviewed data out there showing links between aerobic exercise and your heart, but a good summary (with cited studies) is this article from Johns Hopkins:
[Exercise] improves the muscles’ ability to pull oxygen out of the
blood, reducing the need for the heart to pump more blood to the
muscles.
Distance cyclists and long ...
6
Be careful drinking caffine after exercise, particularly if it's a coffee to go. Think about this. You have just exercised and your heart rate is already high, then you have caffine which elevates your heart rate even higher. I know this wasn't your question, but I wouldn't recommend coffee or any drink with caffine as a post recover drink.
Milk based ...
6
A few misconceptions here.
You will never ever get that "gym body", so don't worry about it
It sounds harsh, but it's true for a few different reasons.
It's hard to achieve in the first place. You need to put a LOT of time and effort, and even money into it, in order to get the "gym body".
A lot of people try, and don't succeed, even WITH the time and ...
6
TLDR: Yes, cycling is better for your knees (and more than that)
Cycling is significantly better for not only your knees but also your ankles and your entire spine. The fact that you push a pedal won't hurt your knee, the sudden impacts while running is what will hurt the join. These sudden impacts are also the reason why it's worse for your spine and ...
5
Swimming fitness is a little different because your arms are the predominant power source and your breathing is controlled instead of natural. If you are having trouble with a length, however, the dominant issue is likely to be efficiency. Form drag, friction, rotational drag, etc. will nearly stop you outright if you are not balanced and smooth. According ...
5
As it stands, you may be fit enough, but you are not trained enough, unless you plan on walking pretty much the entire run portion of the event.
Most marathon plans (Which is a distance shorter than the 30 miles) will have you running 50-70 miles a week, with quite a few runs in the 10-15 mile range.
However, I think the biggest limiter right now is your ...
5
First of all we have to look at what you need in terms of real conditional capacities.
Lactate thresholds have been used to asses one's endurance capacities related to many sports such as cycling, running or swimming.
What you are asking is basically if you can improve the delay in onset of lactate accumulation that is correlated ( not cause ) with the ...
5
The timing of the cool-down phase of exercise does not affect recovery, because there is no benefit to performing a cool-down after exercise.
Based on Do We Need a Cool-Down After Exercise? A Narrative Review of the Psychophysiological Effects and the Effects on Performance, Injuries and the Long-Term Adaptive Response, this systematic review found that the ...
4
We only bought our mountain bikes yesterday, we rode 8 miles and was fine this morning "BUT" may have pushed myself too far today by doing 20 miles and ive got a horrible feeling that my legs will refuse to get back on it tomorrow lol. My backside, my legs, my arms and my shoulders are aching like mad. So I defo think 20 miles is too far...
4
The problem is that the toe nail is too long and the toe box of the shoe is too small. This means that the nail is constantly banged into the wall of the shoe. This physical trauma eventually causes the nailbed to lose adhesion with the nail and the nail will fall off.
Fix:
Make sure that your shoes fit and that the toe box is roomy enough for your toes ...
4
To some extent it depends what you mean by "fitness". To ride your circuit faster for example, you could try some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). You can make up HIIT session for yourself on the bike. THis kind of training can, apparently, help to improve your VO2max.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training
A HIIT ...
4
Always check with your doctor before attempting a new exercise program, especially if as in your case you have a problem. Although you have "flat feet" you may also have other problems that cause pain and swelling of your lower legs with walking or running. Your doctor will give you a diagnosis and may suggest a podiatrist (foot doctor) or physical therapy ...
4
I think you should dissociate the muscular and the cardio-vascular endurance.
Analyzing your perfomance
First of all, I will assume that you are somewhat new to running (since 2 miles is a relatively short distance). In that regard, you are listing two of you latest perfomances stating that there is a small improvement between those.
Pace aside (I don't ...
4
The gym that I train at has several rather cheesy quotes sprayed on the walls, one of the ones that seems particularly apt here is "You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great".
What I mean by that is that if you haven't dedicated any time to fitness in the past, then any time you can dedicate to fitness, be it cycling for an hour,...
4
The most important thing is that you eat enough throughout the day.
The only time window that is of any significance is the 1 or 1 and a half hours after working out. Consuming quality foods at this period will help your body recover from the workout.
I would also suggest you read up on the answers on this question.
4
I feel like there's a fairly wide variety of potential answers here, so I'll throw a few of them out.
It's not easy at first
As someone who has picked up biking to work probably a half dozen times over the years, that first week or two can be agony or at least great frustration. You find yourself out of breath a few minutes in. You have to dismount to get ...
4
Body part specific fat loss is not possible. A person gradually loses bodyfat from their entire body when fat is lost. Some body parts simply carry more fat than others, so acquiring a lower (total) body fat percentage is required to see progress in "stubborn" areas. What's more, fat loss is only ever the product of being in a caloric deficit. Exercise can ...
3
Cycling can be a very effective method for fat and weight loss. If you are going to be primarily using a trainer, then you will probably want to go with a time based method rather than distance.
If you are serious about this, I would look at investing in a powermeter of some kind. I would recommend a wheel based meter with ANT+ technology (Almost all ...
3
Just do a short loop close to home . Few mile circuit . Then just keep increasing more and more laps until you have decent fitness level . That way you can push yourself and you will still be close to home should you get exhausted .
3
While you could blame genetics, biking up enough hills and eating enough food will get you big legs. Nothing to be done about that. So don't do that.
If you want less leg muscles, you need to burn them. You want to train longer at a lower intensity. You also want to consume less protein so that your body can't build new muscles and ultimately can't maintain ...
3
Either one will suit.
You won't be able to sustain the maximum wattage for more than a few minutes, and if you can, your wattage meter is lying to you.
This is a link to an SRM (crank based power meter) power analysis from Mont Ventoux, one of the final stages of the Tour de France. The first part of the graph shows the "leadout" (Usually refers to the ...
3
It's not really possible to hand out a speed to you and say "this is how fast you should ride".
If we're talking about a competitive level cyclist, I think you'll find that most riders are comfortable holding a ~32km / 20mph pace for several hours at a time, on flat surfaces. In fact if you look at the RAAM (Race Across America) you'll see average paces ...
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