Can cycling lead to a reduced life expectancy?



Carrera said:
I do weights once a week. Last night I did 3 sets of squats coupled with some other exercises. There was another guy also doing a session who comes in from the track since he's a runner (sprinter).
We already debated the weights/cycling issue extensively in this part of the forum and it became very controversial. However, nearly everybody agrees weights has more value for sprinters than endurance cyclists.
At any rate, my cycling performance is going very well at present. Sometimes I wonder whether I might actually be cut out for cycling as my strongest sport although at 41 I'm hardly what you might term "young blood".
My enthusiasm for the sport continues to grow, though. This Winter I plan to do some really tough training throughout the coldest months, probably up and around Buxton.
I'm also toying with the idea of fitting carbon components to make my bike a touch lighter.
If you are cycling for fitness you should be fitting heavier parts to your bike.
If you want to be fast you should cut out the counter-productive gym work, and structure your cycle training.
 
A few days ago I was out on a training run which I usually start with a long uphill climb. Quarter way up, I noticed a batch of club riders doing the same climb and carried on at my normal pace. I winded up leaving everyone behind and got off my bike at the top of the climb to try and sort out my crazy gears (triples are a pain).
All the time I have these derailier troubles, the chain rubbing on the front derailier.
At any rate, I asked a couple of the riders for some advice on my gears when they also reached the top and one guy gave me a strange lecture on how I shouldn't be climbing on the big chain ring.
But the big chain ring is the fastest way to eat up road in my view and the advice seemed kind of strange.
The same thing about weights. Those people who feel weights work is a waste of time that's fine by me. If weights has a negative impact on your cycling, then drop it. Do what works for you, is the way I see it.
However, for me it seems to work within the context of the short, explosive cycling I like to do.
By the same token, I like slow cadence and huge gears when I climb as opposed to spinning which doesn't work as well for me.

Don Shipp said:
If you are cycling for fitness you should be fitting heavier parts to your bike.
If you want to be fast you should cut out the counter-productive gym work, and structure your cycle training.
 
Don, why would I require a heavier bike? Unless you take the view heavier bikes are useful for descents.
Lance is obsessive over taking weight off his bike any way he can. One of his bikes was even declared illegal for the TDF it was so light.
Get yourself a carbon frame if you can afford it or have one custom made. Rourkes will build you a model for about 2 K.

Don Shipp said:
If you are cycling for fitness you should be fitting heavier parts to your bike.
If you want to be fast you should cut out the counter-productive gym work, and structure your cycle training.
 
I sure hope not. I am left handed am already supposedly at risk for an earlier life expectancy!!!!

Say it ain't so.

ptlwp
 
Carrera said:
Don, why would I require a heavier bike? Unless you take the view heavier bikes are useful for descents.
Lance is obsessive over taking weight off his bike any way he can. One of his bikes was even declared illegal for the TDF it was so light.
Get yourself a carbon frame if you can afford it or have one custom made. Rourkes will build you a model for about 2 K.
Lance wants a light bike because he is competing, which you are not.
Think of this, if you can knock a few minutes off your run without lightening your bike, then either you have become fitter or your technique has improved.
If you can knock minutes off your run by using lighter wheels, what has this proved?
You cycle for fitness, so a heavier bike is good for the ascents.
For hard training and commuting this winter, use sturdy wheels with robust tyres. They are less likely to pack up on you, and when you switch back again in the spring it will feel like you are flying.
Also, climb on your middle or small ring; the gears won't be rubbing and a high cadence is better for you as well.
 
Carrera said:
But the big chain ring is the fastest way to eat up road in my view and the advice seemed kind of strange.
Heh. If you're on the big ring and biggest cog, so that your chain is rubbing the front derailleur, that's probably a 52x25 gear. The same gear ratio could be achieved in the middle ring (42 teeth) with a 19 or 20 tooth rear cog.

Being in the big ring doesn't mean you're going fast, it just means you've got your chain crossed up, making a bunch or noise and drivetrain wear. That was probably the point of his not so strange advice.
 
mattjf said:
I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but I won't let that stop me from giving my opinion http://cyclingforums.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

My first thought would be there is a real difference between pro riders and amature riders in body fat and weight. If you look at some photos of Rasmussen during this years tour, he looks like a sickly cancer patient. It looks terribly unhealthy. I don't know though, maybe it's fine to have body fat so low.

-Matt
Medical evidence to date strongly suggests that [rather extreme] caloric restriction (something around <=1200Kcal per day for men) results in increased life span, in many species substantially increased. So being thin is not the problem.

Free radicals almost certainly factor into shorter lifespans for endurance athletes. This is offset to some degree by increased heart mass yielding better outcomes after cardiac events but the damage at some level of exercise must outweigh any benefit derived. There are also a variety of rather extreme metabolic changes that occur with intensive and extensive exercise that in sedentary individuals would be associated with organ failure or other serious maladies (don't get a lab test done the day after long intense effort or you may get some very wacky results). Hypoxia from intense efforts can exacerbate underlying medical problems, and the list goes on.

Then there are higher death rates from accident and drug use, whether performance enhancing or not. Suicide is pretty common too. Clavyrolet and Ocana were a couple more climber suicides.
 
mises said:
Free radicals almost certainly factor into shorter lifespans for endurance athletes.
Studies have shown exactly the opposite:
Int J Sports Med. 1991 Dec;12(6):563-6. pMenu2_LocalConfig_jsmenu3Config = [ ["ShowCloseIcon","yes"], ["Help","window.open('/entrez/query/static/popup.html','Links_Help','resizable=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,copyhistory=no,alwaysRaised=no,depend=no,width=400,height=500');"], ["TitleText"," Links "] ] var jsmenu3Config = [ ["UseLocalConfig","jsmenu3Config","",""] ] //--> *javascript:PopUpMenu2_Set(Menu1797698);

[size=+1]Erythrocyte free radical scavenger enzymes in bicycle professional racers. Adaptation to training.[/size]

Mena P, Maynar M, Gutierrez JM, Maynar J, Timon J, Campillo JE.

Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain.

This study was designed to investigate the influence of endurance training on the activities of the scavenger enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) measured in erythrocytes from sedentary subjects, amateur bicycle racers and in professional bicycle racers who were cycling in two real cyclist contests including the top-class race Vuelta a Espana (VCE). Under resting conditions the SOD activity was higher (p less than 0.01) in cyclists than in controls. The activities of CAT and GSH-Px were higher (p less than 0.05 and p less than 0.01, respectively) under resting conditions in professional cyclists versus measured both in sedentary subjects and amateur cyclists. The enzyme activities were not modified significantly in professional cyclists after a bout of exercise of 22 km in 5 hrs, but the SOD activity was increased (p less than 0.05) and CAT activity reduced (p less than 0.05) after 2800 km in 20 days (VCE). The present results shown that aerobic endurance training, when at a professional level, produces an increase in the erythrocyte activities of the main free radicals scavenger enzymes.
 
Don, I think you'd do well to look at a similar thread in this section, namely the one that relates to climbing hills with added weight or dumbells on the bike. The science whiz-kids on this site attacked this whole idea you outline - that added weight on a bike will make you faster once the weight is removed.
Not that I'm personally disagreeing with you over what you stated.
Look, the way I see all of this is I use 2 bikes for training and both are heavier than the carbon frames the specialists on this site will be using. However, what I tend to do is train as much as I can on the bike I know I'm slower on.
Take a few weeks ago. I went for a ride with a group on my old Carrera which cost me a couple of hundred pounds second hand. The others had tailor made Brian Rourke bikes. Obviously I had to work really hard on this bike to keep up.
Now on my other bike I'm a good deal faster. I can really shift on it and training routes seem far easier. So for me it works fine using this system and I also get to keep my best bike out of the rain.
The other point you make is open to debate. A heavy bike is good for descents and you can really give a carbon-frame rider a run on the descents if you can pull level on the ups.
I have thought about fittiing carbon to my bike but really I'm not so sure it will make a heap of difference. The mechanic suggested I could start with my rear wheel and upgrade.
Anyone have any thoughts?


Don Shipp said:
Lance wants a light bike because he is competing, which you are not.
Think of this, if you can knock a few minutes off your run without lightening your bike, then either you have become fitter or your technique has improved.
If you can knock minutes off your run by using lighter wheels, what has this proved?
You cycle for fitness, so a heavier bike is good for the ascents.
For hard training and commuting this winter, use sturdy wheels with robust tyres. They are less likely to pack up on you, and when you switch back again in the spring it will feel like you are flying.
Also, climb on your middle or small ring; the gears won't be rubbing and a high cadence is better for you as well.
 
I would have had my chain on the big chain ring and the third largest gear on my cassette in this case. I truy to avoid the 2 extremes of the gears due to the strong slant of the chain - which will rub down the cogs.
No, what happens is I have gear jinx. I spend that much time trying to get my gears lined up and it drives me crazy. Maybe this time my cables have stretched.

frenchyge said:
Heh. If you're on the big ring and biggest cog, so that your chain is rubbing the front derailleur, that's probably a 52x25 gear. The same gear ratio could be achieved in the middle ring (42 teeth) with a 19 or 20 tooth rear cog.

Being in the big ring doesn't mean you're going fast, it just means you've got your chain crossed up, making a bunch or noise and drivetrain wear. That was probably the point of his not so strange advice.
 
Correct. Ocana came to a sticky end. My own theory is these athletes might have ceased exercise too quickly and suffered a sudden decrease in the dopamine and other chemicals that their brains would have been saturated with.
I know when I ride very hard, I get a drug induced high from dopamine. This combats depression very effectively. Acts as a pain killer when you're battling in the zone.
No way would I contemplate simply stopping cycling and exercise just like that. If I did, I'd get nervous and depressed. I'd have to come down gradually and let my body adapt to the changes.
P.S. there's a documentary tonight about Tom Simpson who also died prematurely during the TDF. It's on at 23. 30 p.m.


mises said:
Medical evidence to date strongly suggests that [rather extreme] caloric restriction (something around <=1200Kcal per day for men) results in increased life span, in many species substantially increased. So being thin is not the problem.

Free radicals almost certainly factor into shorter lifespans for endurance athletes. This is offset to some degree by increased heart mass yielding better outcomes after cardiac events but the damage at some level of exercise must outweigh any benefit derived. There are also a variety of rather extreme metabolic changes that occur with intensive and extensive exercise that in sedentary individuals would be associated with organ failure or other serious maladies (don't get a lab test done the day after long intense effort or you may get some very wacky results). Hypoxia from intense efforts can exacerbate underlying medical problems, and the list goes on.

Then there are higher death rates from accident and drug use, whether performance enhancing or not. Suicide is pretty common too. Clavyrolet and Ocana were a couple more climber suicides.
 
Carrera said:
Don, I think you'd do well to look at a similar thread in this section, namely the one that relates to climbing hills with added weight or dumbells on the bike. The science whiz-kids on this site attacked this whole idea you outline - that added weight on a bike will make you faster once the weight is removed.
Not that I'm personally disagreeing with you over what you stated.
Look, the way I see all of this is I use 2 bikes for training and both are heavier than the carbon frames the specialists on this site will be using. However, what I tend to do is train as much as I can on the bike I know I'm slower on.
Take a few weeks ago. I went for a ride with a group on my old Carrera which cost me a couple of hundred pounds second hand. The others had tailor made Brian Rourke bikes. Obviously I had to work really hard on this bike to keep up.
Now on my other bike I'm a good deal faster. I can really shift on it and training routes seem far easier. So for me it works fine using this system and I also get to keep my best bike out of the rain.
The other point you make is open to debate. A heavy bike is good for descents and you can really give a carbon-frame rider a run on the descents if you can pull level on the ups.
I have thought about fittiing carbon to my bike but really I'm not so sure it will make a heap of difference. The mechanic suggested I could start with my rear wheel and upgrade.
Anyone have any thoughts?
What frame does your best bike have? Which wheels?
I would not advise buying expensive new stuff at this time of year.
 
I ride a Scott Sport and wouldn't change the bike for anything at this time. Fits me like a glove. It also has a different feel to my Carrera.
I enclose a pic of a Scott road bike although my own is a different model.
The bike remains immaculate as I don't ride it in bad weather and use my other bike for wet or snowy weather.
But in all cases I degrease regularly and clean the bike carefully so it stays roadworthy.

Don Shipp said:
What frame does your best bike have? Which wheels?
I would not advise buying expensive new stuff at this time of year.
 
Carrera said:
The science whiz-kids on this site attacked this whole idea you outline - that added weight on a bike will make you faster once the weight is removed.
Oh, you'll ride faster by removing the weight, since you've adapted to riding at higher power levels. The point is that extra weight isn't *needed* to train at those higher power levels. You can just pedal faster or use a slightly bigger gear to get the power level you desire.

You got it right - just clarifying. :)
 
Carrera said:
A few days ago I was out on a training run which I usually start with a long uphill climb. Quarter way up, I noticed a batch of club riders doing the same climb and carried on at my normal pace. I winded up leaving everyone behind and got off my bike at the top of the climb to try and sort out my crazy gears (triples are a pain).
All the time I have these derailier troubles, the chain rubbing on the front derailier.
At any rate, I asked a couple of the riders for some advice on my gears when they also reached the top and one guy gave me a strange lecture on how I shouldn't be climbing on the big chain ring.
But the big chain ring is the fastest way to eat up road in my view and the advice seemed kind of strange.
The same thing about weights. Those people who feel weights work is a waste of time that's fine by me. If weights has a negative impact on your cycling, then drop it. Do what works for you, is the way I see it.
However, for me it seems to work within the context of the short, explosive cycling I like to do.
By the same token, I like slow cadence and huge gears when I climb as opposed to spinning which doesn't work as well for me.

You sound like your a track cyclist (big ring/cookie- hammering out - sprinting ). Doing hill work could be good for conditioning your cardio - but sounds like you'd get the best overall results out of going super fast- big cookie- aero baby TT , track ;) Something to think about .. ??
 
Adam-from-SLO said:
You sound like your a track cyclist (big ring/cookie- hammering out - sprinting ). Doing hill work could be good for conditioning your cardio - but sounds like you'd get the best overall results out of going super fast- big cookie- aero baby TT , track ;) Something to think about .. ??
Now you've given him the idea, he'll be doing that as well as all the stuff he's doing already.
 
It gets worse. :( I've just gone ahead and bought a canal boat.
In order to moor it I'm going to have to drive the boat down to a remote mooring spot where the rent is lower and cycle back and forth through the countryside in order to carry out work on the said boat. It means a lot of miles of practical cycling apart from the training runs I do already.
I've never driven a canal boat before and have to find out about repairs to the bodywork, painting and all that stuff.
So now it looks like I've suddenly got into boating as well.
Anyone know anything about boats? :)

Don Shipp said:
Now you've given him the idea, he'll be doing that as well as all the stuff he's doing already.
 
I tend to do less miles than other cyclists but I guess I'm not a sprinter either. However, I just had 2 whole days off and will be ready to rumble tomorrow.

Adam-from-SLO said:
You sound like your a track cyclist (big ring/cookie- hammering out - sprinting ). Doing hill work could be good for conditioning your cardio - but sounds like you'd get the best overall results out of going super fast- big cookie- aero baby TT , track ;) Something to think about .. ??
 
Carrera said:
I tend to do less miles than other cyclists but I guess I'm not a sprinter either. However, I just had 2 whole days off and will be ready to rumble tomorrow.
Two whole days? ;) I haven't ridden since September 9th.
 
Carrera said:
It gets worse. :( I've just gone ahead and bought a canal boat.
In order to moor it I'm going to have to drive the boat down to a remote mooring spot where the rent is lower and cycle back and forth through the countryside in order to carry out work on the said boat. It means a lot of miles of practical cycling apart from the training runs I do already.
I've never driven a canal boat before and have to find out about repairs to the bodywork, painting and all that stuff.
So now it looks like I've suddenly got into boating as well.
Anyone know anything about boats? :)
It's probably not the best time of year to buy a boat.
That needs doing up.
Make these rides be your training rides, not as well as.
 

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