Originally Posted by I-Like-To-Bike
Obviously you view cycling as all about exercise and workouts and only lazy people are not enamored of your vision of bicycling as another facet of calisthetics. Right in there with weight lifting and morning crunches. I don't share it; perhaps your pals in the group-think/bicycling club do.
Well, it really comes down to what your
goals are with cycling.
1. to cruise the beach and enjoy the scenery is fine and no training is needed, no suffering and no sweating necessary.
2. fitness-improvement as measured by RHR, body-fat%, VO2-max, lean muscle-mass, recovery-time, etc. will require some suffering and pushing your body to its max.
3. weight-loss goes hand-in-hand with fitness-improvement. You can ride a steady slow pace for a long time and burn off calories and lose weight. That just takes
long time. If you couple it with sprints and intervals to improve your fitness, you can burn off even more calories/hr and lose weight faster, like 3-5x faster at 1.5-2 lb/week no problem.
4. commuting, unless your timecard starts and stops when you go through your home's front-door, commuting isn't paying. So you'd want to be fit enough to get the commuting done in a short time. This leaves more time for other fun things you can be doing like sports with your kids after work, chores around the house, night-classes, etc.