Beginnner Cyclist with a few questions..

[EriktheAwesome]

Hey Guys,

I'm a new member to the forums and just had a few quick questions with road cycling..

So, I'm 17 years old and about 5'8, 145 lbs. And this week I bought my FIRST road bike. I've always been into cycling indoors and
was doing over 300+ miles a week on the spin bike. But this monday I decided to start on the road.
For my first bike, I bought a Fuji Roubaix 3.0. The 2010 Model.

I absolutely LOVE my bike and want to start racing in college in a few months, and this week I've ridden about 50 Miles everyday. I ride to and from school in the morning,
I ride to a restaurant at lunch ( Senior in High School ), then back to school. Then I ride home. By the time I get home I'm already at 20 miles on the day. I then throw on my jersey and my biking shorts and can usually pound out my 25-30 miles after school. Which leads me to my first question.

1) I read about bikers having to consume a lot of calories for the sport, does this still apply to me since I have to attend class?
I know my heart rate goes down when I'm in class, so I'm not burning calories as much as I would be on the bike. But, does this matter in terms of calorie burn?

It's kind of hard to explain what I mean, but I pretty much just gauge how many calories I need to take in for the day. By how many miles I've cycled for THAT day. So, I guess my question is.. am I doing it right?

2) Like I said, I've ridden over 250 miles in the past 5 days on my Fuji and I enjoy every second of it.
Is this too much? Should I tone it down?

3) How important is strength training, because to be flat out honest. I stopped strength training all together about 2-3 weeks ago since I really got into cycling.

4) Right now, I just go on 30kcals burned per mile. I ride down a lot of hills, and a lot of flats. But at the same time I do right UP a lot of hills. How many cals do you guys estimate YOU burn?

Thanks a lot for reading and I'm sorry for the massive amount of questions!

Have a good one guys!

 

[FXmomto3]

I'm new to cycling too, but am a personal trainer....though I haven't as of yet taken specific cycling coaching courses like I hope to in the next month or two....my advice right now would be to say that strength training is important, but hypertrophy (building muscle size isn't that important and may even hinder in cycling)...you may want to do some light strength training even just twice a week to maintain what you have....exercise over an hour can burn off glycogen stores and start eating proteins of the muscle, therefore depleting muscle in endurance activities....(may also give you some hints with that statement about nutrition)....but you could just fit in a short 20 minute body weight routine after cycling since you're already warmed up just twice a week...include some pushups, maybe pull-ups, power squats, etc.....and in the off-season, I'd increase the strength training and plyometrics...take a look at some periodization schedules....

I'm also hoping to take sports nutrition over the next year, so for right now I won't speak to your calories question. But one thing I will mention is that so many people think they have to have protein protein protein...but what they don't realize is that without the proper balance of carbs, the protein isn't doing what its supposed to anyway....

Best of luck to you !

 

[EriktheAwesome]

awesome! Thanks alot for the advice!