Confession time here: I have not always made good choices in my life.Among them was a 30+ year addiction to smoking.Which is now done.
The impact on my cycling is noticeable. I plain do not have the wind to really push hard, and am lucky to average 15 mph on a flat road ride. Hills are a weak point too.
My question is whether there are ways to improve respiratory function through cycling. Although I have been a transportation cyclist for nearly 20 years, road and fitness riding are a new experience to me.
Has anybody had experience with this?

Overtime you will improve your cycling and lung capacity. Put the miles and enjoy steep hills to open those lungs.

Chain smoked (well over 2 packs a day for 10 years)--that was 35 years ago and today I don't feel a thing--at least I think I don't feel a thing!

Also for sure check with your doctor to be safe he may want you to have a chest xray!

Many people have been where you are and have successfully progressed to an active and relatively healthy life. From my experience how much improvement is a highly individual matter. But working and tracking your progress against time is part of the fun. One caution is to be sure to not compare yourself to anyone else.

Have fun!

I smoked for 25 years. Gave it up in my mid-forties, got back on the bike at 49. I was very unfit. Within a couple of years I was riding centuries, eventually took up racing at 57. A bit late to think of winning much, but I could hang in there.

Obviously, people differ. But unless you are among the minority that doesn't respond to training, you can certainly improve your fitness as well as your health by increasing your time on the bike. Try maintaining a pace just slightly above your usual cruising speed - you should be able to talk in short sentences, but not paragraphs. You'll see progress. If after a couple of months of that you want to get more systematic, there are plenty of training manuals. Joe Friel's "Cycling past 50" might be something you'd find useful

I smoked for 35 years, quitting at age 49. I'd started cycling earlier in that year and gave up smoking because it was the first thing in my life that smoking interfered with that I preferred to smoking.

Twenty-eight months after taking up cycling, 21 months after quitting smoking, I travelled to Colorado. The very first mountain I climbed was Mt Evans, which at 14,160 feet (to the parking lot, 14,230 to the summit) is the highest paved road in North America. I suffered mightily on that climb, but I think it was more because I'm a lifelong lowlander and flatlander. Still, I did it, without extra O2, which I'd considered. At the time they'd begun selling little O2 canisters for cyclists. Those things have disappeared, I think.

In any event, it's hard to tease out how much was due to training and overall aerobic capacity (which includes cardiovascular) and how much was just lung capacity. If pressed, I'd say only 5% to 10% was lungs. You can't undo the damage done, only improve undamaged portions, and after 35 years, there’s little of that.

These days I can get individual rides to average 17-18.5 on the flats, but my overall average of all rides remains stubbornly in the 15s. Average speed of all rides in the year:

2006 13.82
2007 14.50
2008 15.25
2009 15.71
2010 15.73
2011 15.72
2012 15.66
2013 15.66
2014 15.65 YTD

If I were to cherry-pick, I can show numbers a bit higher than that. For instance, for all 95 rides YTD in 2014 on my Litespeed, the average is 16.44.

I'm also guessing that if I were to work a for-real training program I could improve the figure. I just don't have the temperament to follow a formal training program. Nor the interest either. Maybe those are the same things.

YMMV, of course. Me? I've simply decided to accept the consequences of my past and be grateful for what I have left. As it is I'm healthier than most 20-year-olds, and even my doc is jealous. That's good enough for me.

Much of what Chas and tsl said about having been a smoker applies to me as well, pipe smoker starting at 18, even when I was running a lot and seriously cycling well into the 80's. I had to quit smoking in order to have lumbar fusions in 2004, actually had hung up the pipe and pouch in 2000 when I had a ruptured appendix. No regrets about quitting and less about having smoked, tsl nailed that one, too, you cannot change the fact you did smoke in the past. Unless you have COPD, or a latent cancer, your O2 up take and ability will improve with riding and not smoking, as said by both gentlemen.

I'd do the doctor/checkup thing, if you haven't already done so, and just ride as much as you enjoy/wish. I'm in the same boat as tsl for my speed average, 15 seems to be written in stone for an overall average. I did manage to hold a steady 20 mph average for some long stretches the last 2 weeks, though!!!!!, somehow. I will skip posting my palmares, and resume, to the various World Pro teams I think

Best of luck with your riding, stick around the 50+ forum and enjoy every minute of smoke free riding.

Bill

I smoked for 30 years or so. Quit around 7 years ago. I believe my lung function has improved from what it was. I still huff and puff on the hills in northwest Arkansas, but I make it to the top. On the Big Dam Bridge century in Little Rock, I managed to pass a few people going up the big climb of the route. I averaged 15.2 on that ride, so I may be stuck in that range like you and some of the others. I'm a choir boy, and I've noticed an improved lung function in that endeavor.

I've never smoked but there are other historic factors which impact my present day ability on the bike - mostly a sedentary lifestyle where I carried around way too much weight for way too long.

I think I'll always be dragging around some degree of a 'boat anchor', which is the residual effect of not looking after myself for so many years, much like you who'll probably always have some issue with lung capacity/function as a direct result of your many years of smoking.

The way I approach it is to set my own reference points along the way and to always compare my latest performance back to where I started from - with the emphasis on I, and not someone else. So even though my ultimate performance will always be some rungs down the ladder when compared with other people of a similar age to me, I can still take a lot of comfort and positive reinforcement from seeing my own results exceed my early expectations.

If I were hugely competitive then I could become frustrated at not being able to keep up with the best in my age group, but I'm not, so I'm happy to just keep building up new personal bests.

Pat yourself on the back for quitting smoking.

I don't think that we can ever get our full lung capacity back, but as I see it it's all about playing the hand we're holding as best we can. I'm still making improvements, after starting seven years ago and after a pack a day habit for many years.

I was a life long smoker also and I have asthma besides. While this limits oxygen uptake and capacity to sustain high speeds, I've seen a vast improvement in stamina from those first days on the bike. I don't train systematically but do push the pace a bit and work on climbing. Surprisingly, even with my mello efforts at improvement, I see slow buy steady progress. I pay close attention to breathing as if I were a high altitude mountaineer. This consists of breathing with the diaphragm and through the nose. Google yoga breathing and breathing exercises for asthmatics, which are all designed to improve breathing mechanics. It works.

Wow ... so many who've smoked! Smoking is kinda uncommon here on the west coast, but I've noticed it to be far more common on the east coast and especially Europe. I wonder if a poll among the 50+ers would reveal about how many of us smoked a significant amount at one time or another.

I hope you don't mind me asking this, but I'm curious. Why did you start? And what made you stop?

It is more in California that smokers are becoming relatively rare particularly in the Bay Area! Not so in Oregon or further North!

And I would completely disagree with wphamilton because I think one can regain full lungs function and then some with time and good training and will! Of course depending on how much damage was done!

Back in the 50s and 60s some cyclists were smoking (unfortunately) the most famous was Anquetil a 5 time winner of the Tour de France--he also was well known (to use his words) "doctoring himself" and drank plenty as well!

I smoked from age 7 to age 20. Yes, carried my own pack/matches and inhaled at 7. Spent lunch money on cigarretes. So did most of my friends. Didn't smoke in front of my parents, who were smokers.

^ Seven! Holy crap.

One of our employees sent me this pix of her and her sister being baby sat by an aunt. She popped a couple of cigarettes in their mouths and took this.



Flippin hilarious, IMHO, but her mom didn't think so.

I never smoked (well, smoked dope for a few years, "I went to college!") but my average speed is a couple mph below the magic 15mph you ex-smokers seem to get!

I'm stuck in the 13 - 14 mph range and some rides down in the 12's!

I still have a fun time riding though, so no complaints! Here's a link to my last big ride (last Saturday) . . . stuck (slowly) at 13.2!

Garmin Connect

I want to be 15+ mph fast like you guys!

Rick / OCRR

It isn't so uncommon. California has the second lowest percentage of adult smokers among the fifty states, but in 2010 14% of Californians were current smokers. Go back to the sixties and seventies when most of us were growing up, and the percentage would be much, much higher.

I can't speak for you Americans, but here in the UK it was something one did, almost a rite of passage to adulthood. It was advertised as being sophisticated and glamorous and presented as such on TV and in cinema (think Bogart, before he died of lung cancer). It was "cool".

In my own case, however, I was pretty impervious to all that. I didn't start smoking cigarettes until I was about 21, an unfortunate by-product of being a regular hash smoker at University. Oh, the irony.

I quit, after several failed attempts, when my recognition of my own mortality began to outweigh my desire for the next cigarette.

I tired one of my dads Camel None Filters "ONE" Time when i was about 14 back in 1968. It was down right nasty and made me gag. My parents both smoked camel none filters and when riding in the car if i tried to crack my window a bit to get rid of the smoke, they would say ROLL UP THAT Window. Im 60 now and not ever a puff since.

^ Yea my Dad (chain smoker ... and on one lung) took me aside when I was 15, and told me:

"You're old enough to smoke now. Do you want a cigarette?"

Boy, did I. I slid that Lucky Strike outta the package, put it to my lips, lit up, and took a deep breath. After all those commercials, I knew what to expect. Lasting, satisfying flavor!

It took me 15 minutes to stop coughing. I had bad asthma as a kid (hospitalization) and it almost triggered another attack.

"Cripes ... <cough> <cough> ... why do you smoke those things?!?"

"Wish I never started. You'll be smart if you don't."

Good advice. They finally killed him with a massive heart attack at 67. He was able to quit a lot of bad habits, including alcohol, but he never got that stink weed monkey off his back.

BTW ... Bogie died of esophageal cancer. That's linked to both smoking and drinking, and he did plenty of both.

My mistake. Obviously my memory has deteriorated more than my lungs.

I liked the comment "pat yourself on the back" for quitting the cigs. A very tough addiction to break, maybe the hardest. Congrats.

Lol. I only know that because I'm a Bogie fan and because a lot of my relatives have suffered from esophageal cancer ... the product of heavy drinking.

Your average must be from total time. I used to track it that way, then it seemed that I was one of the few that didnt track ave speed by wheel time. I do qualify my ave speed by adding "moving time"

I smoked cigarettes from 1970 - Jan 1 1978., then a pipe off and on from then until 1989. Nothing since then.

Hi Dwight,

According to my Garmin, both average speed and moving speed: 13.2. Not sure how that could be except (calculations wise) that my off-the-bike time was relatively short; at least compared to total time.

I know we spent a lot of time (half an hour?) at both lunch at the Filipino checkpoint. Actually, Garmin shows three times;
Time: 15:12:48
Moving Time: 15:10:28
Elapsed Time: 19:17:44

I'll have to check to see how that's calculated. Since we started at about 3:30AM and finished at 9:30PM, that would be about 18 hours. And . . . since we started a bit before 3:30 and finished a bit after 9:30, 19:17:44 seems about right for the total time. Figured on total time, I rode @ about 10 mph .

Yikes, the ex-smokers ride a lot faster than I do!
.
Rick / OCRR

67 years old and never smoked at all. I have mild asthma and struggle on steep hills but I think that's probably legs rather than lungs.

I know Jim tracks overall average for the doubles, and 13-14 is what he expects.

then there is Hemet, with what seems like a thousand traffic lights.