I'm not looking for anything drastic here... maybe I didn't explain my goals that well. Basically, there are two of them. 1) I want to be biking 4-6 days per week, and 2) I want to gain at least 20 lbs of muscle around my body. I'm 5'10 145, in good shape with a decent muscular foundation but obviously rather slim, and would like to reach 165.

I'm not convinced that simply eating a ton can overcome the training restrictions that I'm going to run into. Like I said above, if I bike 20 miles and then try to do squats or deadlifts the next day, I'm just not going to be able to push to my limit (at least in my experience so far--- I'm still just starting cycling, so maybe that will change). Even eating 5000 calories per day, my muscles get fatigued from activities I do, so I don't see the connection... or are you saying that a super high food intake leads to much faster muscle recovery time? Overall, I'm having trouble envisioning a training routine where I can bike this much and still gain lower body muscle, unless I take breaks from cycling periodically.

The conclusion I've come to is to go head and do upper body as I'm cycling, whenever I have time/energy for it, hopefully 2-3 times per week. Then, when I'm not cycling as much in Fall, Winter, Spring, I can focus on lifting. If someone has ideas on how I can get started now on the lifting, without waiting, I'd love to hear them. But again, I don't see the connection between carlories in/calories out and the simple problem of muscle fatigue and recovery.

One last clarification: I get the calories in/calories out as it relates to upper body muscle, but anything that involves muscles I use on the bike (legs, glutes) seems to be a different story. Hopefully someone can address this specifically.