Recovering cycling addict

[petalmasher]

Hello all,

I’m 33 year old married guy. I’m also a competitive bicycle racer.  After being a long-time weight lifter and runner, I participated in my first mountain bike race 4-years ago, and became hooked. I don’t know what it is about a bike that turns my normally noncompetitive self into someone who will turn himself inside-out to make sure he’s the first to the top of every hill or across a finish line. I really dropped all other non-cycling fitness activities because any time and energy spent lifting or running seemed to be better spent on a bike because the more time I spent on my bikes, the more people I would be able to beat in a race.  I didn't limit it to one discipline; I raced road, mountain and cyclocross races, and I’m sure that if there were a Velodrome in my city, I’d have been doing track races too. I was spending about 12-hours per week on a bike

 

Anyhow, I got a new job last winter, it’s a job that I've been chasing for a long time, and I finally got it.  I spent most of the winter and spring at the company training center and away from my bikes, and because I had advanced high enough through the levels of armature racing, I really wasn't able to be competitive in the races I tried without having had proper base and building training phases. I decided to take the rest of the year off from bike racing, and even when I start up again next year, I’ll limit myself to just road racing.

 

So I’m not technically out of shape in the traditional sedentary couch-potato kind of way, but I'm beginning to see some of the consequences of the one-dimensional, cycling-only fitness routine I've employed for the last 4 years. Because I was burning through so much energy on the bike, I developed some bad eating habits that have come back to bite me now that I’m not using all those extra sugars as bike fuel. When I realized I was up to 175 from my 165 race weight (I’m 6’0 tall), I ratcheted back on the portion sizes to stop me from putting on more fat, but I haven’t lost any of that 10 lbs I gained. Also, I’ve allowed my upper-body to atrophy to the point that many of my typical household and work tasks that were once easy have become incredibly difficult. I also had my bone Density tested and it is pretty low, not quite low enough to be considered osteoporosis, but low enough that I definitely need to do something about it.

 

All that having been said, here are my goals and how I plan to attain them:

1.      Increase functional strength (I don’t need to be able to dead-lift a truck, I just need to be able shovel snow, and lift a case of tools and electronic test equipment in and out of my car with ease) I'll be trying to do two full body workouts each week using all compound lifts and free weights.

2.      Increase Bone mass (by doing more load bearing and impact exercises) I will get it tested again before I start training for racing again.  The lifting should help with that but I'll also be doing HIIT trail runs followed by bodyweight exercises at the park where my runs start and end

3.      Reduce body fat (I haven’t checked my body fat percentage, but now is the first time I can remember that my abs are not clearly visible, so I’d like to get them back to how they were) I'm trying to do the "paleo" thing with the exception of the fact that I will be consuming some dairy. I need the calcium for bone mass.

I've already been dong these things this for a few weeks.

 

I’ll be looking for comments, pointers and advice about General fitness, my current workout routine and diet. I’m also happy to give advice anything bicycle related and on endurance training (I also ran marathons before I started bike racing)

Thanks for reading.

 

[petalmasher]

Oops,  I double posted... I'd take it down if I knew how