Randy954 wrote: »

TheBigYin wrote: »

rvoodoo wrote: »

Here's my Roubaix. Got her exactly a year ago... she's seen 4000+ miles since then. I've lost nearly no weight so I'm doing something wrong!!

...snip...

Top and bottom of it is, It's impossible to out-train a bad diet. Eat Less, Eat Better, Log it and Stick to a plan. It'll happen.

Amen... to can't "out-train a bad diet". Careful on "eat less". Eating better IMHO, means give your body everything it needs nutritionally. To know that, I suggest get a segment body measurement (I use a Tanita scale). Know your muscle mass, for example. That will tell you how many grams of protein you must have daily. That way you'll know, weight loss, is not muscle loss.

Well - as someone who gets a bi-annual Dexa scan (full body composition scan) because of a family history of osteoporosis and a couple of rather nasty broken bone incidents of my own, I'm pretty well aware of my ACCURATE body fat composition...

Around 2 years ago, I weighed in at 105kg's with a measured body fat % of 11.4% (combined visceral and subcutaneous). That meant at that point I was running at 93.03kg lean mass... At this point i'd dropped from being 180.5kg's 18 months prior, and my doctor advised me to actually stop attempting to lose weight, but to concentrate on maintaining my current "dimensions" (waist/chest/hip measurments) and start training properly for fitness strength and endurance on the bike instead - in effect to "stop working on the bodywork, and tune the engine instead". Main reason was to actually give my body time for the skin to "rebound" and hopefully become a little less saggy and baggy.

Unfortunately a combination of serious upheavals to my personal circumstances and home life, and a recent enforced 4 month no-exercise on medical grounds hiatus has resulted in my gaining a bit of weight again... Most recent scan came in recently at 123.8kg and 19.6% Body fat (lean mass being 99.53kg) - so I've gained 18.8kg (not good) of which 6.5kg has been additional muscle - mainly added in the first year after the "try and maintain size" - as borne out by my increased FTP figures over that period.

Hopefully, when I'm actually fit again, and allowed back in training, I'm now back on the lose weight AND increase fitness track - the idea is to attempt to "train down" to what is basically an optimal figure of 88kg and still have a healthy level of body fat. To do this I'd need to lose muscle mass... but the idea is that toned muscle is easier to sculpt and work with. It SHOULD be attainable, as when I was racing in my twenties, I weighed 82-84kgs with around 7% body fat. The Additional Muscle mass was something that was actually gained in the process of carrying around anything up to an additional 95kgs of weight over the years...

Oh, and if anyones wondering about the "optimal" figure, it's something that is a "strong suggestion" from the orthopaedic surgeons that reconstructed my pelvis, thigh and knee in the past - to try and keep the overall load bearing down and avoid the eventual replacement hip joint for as long as possible... It's not just a figure I've plucked out of the air willy-nilly.

lpherman01 wrote: »

It lets me ride hard with my wife without dropping her

I did ride as a stoker with a friend once. He was/is the strongest rider in our club and it certainly was interesting. Dropped the AX riders on the flats with ease.

I remember doing 2 club 10 mile TT's on a tandem way, way back in the day... the Tandem we used was actually a fixed gear track tandem that i'd put a "flip flop" hub and freewheel in, so we could freewheel, but it was basically just a 55-15 singlespeed... Rim brakes only and it was bloody terrifying - fortunately the course was a "dual carriageway" dragstrip out-and-back with the turn in the road being a roundabout rather than a dead stop. They set us off 3 minutes after the "scratch man" on the solo's and I think we passed just about everyone the first week. The second week we stacked it on the turn-around and limped in about 4 minutes slower than the first attempt.

We did actually ride it a third time - in the club's boxing day morning 5mile TT - which is traditionally done "hung over, while wearing fancy dress" - I dread to think what any cars who saw us that morning thought when they saw a pantomime horse on a tandem...