translating spinning to regular biking
 

I can't get out on the bike every day because of my work, so I have a good spin bike that I can ride on the days that I can't ride outside. When riding my bike, I feel good and don't have any hurts. On the spin bike, I feel fine, but the next day, my lower back hurts A LOT. I re-adjusted the seat and handlebars today and think I might have had the seat too high, so we'll see if this helps.
In the meantime, how can you translate miles spinning to miles on a bike on the road? It takes me about as long to ride a mile on the spinner as it does on a bike, and I can dial up hills on the spinner, like on the bike. Is it reasonable to claim the miles that the odometer on the spinner tells me I am doing? Or is there a convention for translating one to the other?
Thanks,

I find the miles on the spin bike to be easier than road miles, unless you really crank up the tension. Here in East Tennessee it is all uphill or downhill and I find my heartrate is much higher climbing hills than on the spin. I think it has more to do with effort than miles. Some classes wipe you out at 10 to 12 miles while some 20 mile classes are easy, a lot depends on the instructor.


Al

No.

For me when Im done an hour of hard spin class with warm up cool downs feels like 25 miles of flat road at 3/4 throttle, or 15 miles close to redline. Really next to impossable to relate the two as there are just to many variables.

This issue comes up from time to time and there is disagreement about it.

I do count trainer and spin miles in my cycling log, but I agree it is hard to relate them to "real" riding. As to "claiming" these miles, there is nowhere to file such a claim and no convention on it, so I just satisfy myself. In some ways trainer/spin time is more productive than "real" miles anyway.

Time on a spinner or bike trainer, for me, is time to do something difficult and pretty intense and specific. This is always done during the most severe months of the winter when "real" rides are difficult to impossible. I seldom ride a spinner or bike trainer for more than one hour, and VERY seldom ride my bike less than one hour so indoor miles account for a very small, but productive, percentage of time spent pedaling. So, yes, I do count them as a small but important part of my cycling life.

I assume by "spin bike" you mean one of those health club bikes used in spinning class and not one of your bike set up in a trainer. I try to train in the off-season on my rollers. But, none of those even roughly equates to moving my 17 lb bike and 187 lb body up a hill or through the air in front of me. A combination of rollers and spinning classes is about the best I can do until the weather permits road work.

Where is that "claiming place" anyways?

I guess if I was at all concerned about keeping track of things (I used to be, but finally realized it was more frustrating to me than helpful and was hurting my objectives for bicycling), I would simply record two different figures

1. Bicycling miles on the bicycle

2. Spinning hours on the spin bike. Or "miles," if you like, although I really doubt you went very far on the spinner :)

That way you can compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges from time to time.

My thought is the records are only for yourself and your own improvement, anyways, unless you are going to race or compete with others in some way. Are you?

Whether on a real bike or a spinning bike, it's not miles. It's level of effort and duration.

and fun and satisfaction

Thanks. I can't claim these for anything really. It would be great if they were worth $.10 a mile like soft drink cans are here. Good point though about exertion rather than mileage. I do have a heart rate monitor that I have neglected to wear during this start up phase of my biking. I should put it on next time I ride and compare how I exert myself on the spinner compared to on the bike. Thanks for that thought.

I am working my way toward 100 miles. I thought it would take a couple of months, it might take a month or just a bit more if all goes well. I passed the 50 mile mark today. I managed to get out of my neighborhood (which requires a hill) and rode the whole way. There are several hills around here, and there is really nowhere flat to ride without taking the bike somewhere, and at this point, that seems a little silly to do on a regular basis. There are good roads and very little traffic here, so now I know that I can get up over the hill, and over a few other hills, and I made it. That was a great feeling. I really wanted to quit and walk, but I said to myself that unless and until the bike actually came to a halt, I would keep riding..... I definitely used my gears.
So now I am on the downhill side of my own personal "century".
whooohooo! :-D

There are 5 schools of thought.

1) The wheel goes around the same distance, so count it as equivalent.
2) The wheel goes around but it counts for more or less, nobody is quite sure, by how much
3) Spinner miles do not count for anything only road miles count.
4) A combination, it's equivalent for maintenance purposes, but for more or less, nobody is quite sure as a workout.
5) It's equivalent for maintenance purposes, but for a workout, it's only intent is to keep the legs and body from turning into Jello over the off season.

I track distance, my distance tracker application has a trainer flag, so I know how much is on which bike, and how much of that is on the trainer, most of the road bike riding this year, has been on the trainer... Most people who think trainer distance should not count, live in places where you can ride on the road all year.

6) It just doesn't matter.

Now to throw another wringer into the discusion. I do several spinning classes a week at the local fitness center. I recently found out the number that everyone thought was milage was actually a number representing the number of revolutions of the wheel. According to the Manufacture it in no way represents any milage figure at all. So check with the company that makes the spinning bike to see if you are actually reading MPH or even KPH.

I can see no real way to corelate the two other than to use "time in the saddle". I enjot both spinning and street riding as they bith have their benefits to me. Enjoy yourself and be safe

Once you keep track of these separate activities, then you might be able to compare performances while biking. The thing you might be trying to say is how is spinning helping my biking? And not the other way around.