Hey everyone.
This question has been causing quite a quandry in my mind. I've vacillated with this query for some time now (about a year) and have come to the conclusion that I MUST lose weight (about 5kgs down to 80kgs) in order to be competitive on the road here in British Columbia. Because I'm relatively new to the cycling scene (6/06 got my first road bike) I'm still in the mindset that I want to be pretty good at all the disciplines - road races, crits, time trials, track racing. I've had some decent results in all the disciplines this past season, but I want to really turn it up a notch or two for 2008 and get an upgrade to Cat. 3 on the road and be able to dictate the outcome of race rather than endure it.
I'm coming from a background of American football so I have fast twitch muscles in great abundance, couple that with the fact that I naturally have a low body fat percentage (~4% at 85kgs), I have really struggled in trying to lose weight since I've got to this point. I'm basically embarking on trying to lose muscle that took 20+ years to build (I'm 40 now and when I got on my road bike I was 96kgs). What's been working for me the past month is keeping track of EVERYTHING I eat and making a balance sheet of input versus expenditure. I'm seeing good, albeit slow, results.
So, for I what I want to achieve (good all-arounder in all disciplines) how do you guys feel - everything else being equal, is it more important for one to lose weight (but keep same or a little less power), or would it be more advantageous for a cyclist to try and improve his power (but at the same weight or a little more)? Both serve the purpose to improve the almighty power to weight ratio, but is one more effective than the other????
FYI, my FTP at present is in the low 340s and this is with very limited focused Level 4 work.
This question has been causing quite a quandry in my mind. I've vacillated with this query for some time now (about a year) and have come to the conclusion that I MUST lose weight (about 5kgs down to 80kgs) in order to be competitive on the road here in British Columbia. Because I'm relatively new to the cycling scene (6/06 got my first road bike) I'm still in the mindset that I want to be pretty good at all the disciplines - road races, crits, time trials, track racing. I've had some decent results in all the disciplines this past season, but I want to really turn it up a notch or two for 2008 and get an upgrade to Cat. 3 on the road and be able to dictate the outcome of race rather than endure it.
I'm coming from a background of American football so I have fast twitch muscles in great abundance, couple that with the fact that I naturally have a low body fat percentage (~4% at 85kgs), I have really struggled in trying to lose weight since I've got to this point. I'm basically embarking on trying to lose muscle that took 20+ years to build (I'm 40 now and when I got on my road bike I was 96kgs). What's been working for me the past month is keeping track of EVERYTHING I eat and making a balance sheet of input versus expenditure. I'm seeing good, albeit slow, results.
So, for I what I want to achieve (good all-arounder in all disciplines) how do you guys feel - everything else being equal, is it more important for one to lose weight (but keep same or a little less power), or would it be more advantageous for a cyclist to try and improve his power (but at the same weight or a little more)? Both serve the purpose to improve the almighty power to weight ratio, but is one more effective than the other????
FYI, my FTP at present is in the low 340s and this is with very limited focused Level 4 work.