Your fitness level is higher when your resting heart rate is slow and your heart rate after you exercise intensely returns to its resting level more quickly, according to "Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease." Very fit people have a resting heart rate of 50 to 60 heartbeats per minute. Bicycling is one of the best activities for maximizing your fitness level, but proper nutrition is crucial.
Health Vs. Fitness
Improving your fitness is "counterproductive to health in some instances" because vigorous exercise can cause injuries, according to "The Well Adult." The book recommends bicycling as one of the best activities for improving fitness for two reasons. First, it is a continuous aerobic exercise that forces you to use large groups of muscles and, thus, improves your cardiovascular conditioning. Secondly, it causes fewer injuries to the joints and muscles than running and other aerobic activities.
Fitness Routines
Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, who has written 18 exercise books, wrote that you can become physically fit by cycling four to seven miles a day three or four times weekly for 10 weeks. You can maintain your fitness by cycling eight miles in 24 to 32 minutes three times weekly or cycling six miles in 18 to 24 minutes five times weekly, Cooper wrote.
Carbohydrates
You might not be able to bicycle well enough to attain good fitness levels if you don't have enough glycogen, or carbohydrates, in your muscles, according to "Swim, Bike, Run." The carbohydrates you eat are stored in your body so you have enough energy to exercise. If you have a high carbohydrate diet, you can replenish the energy you lost bicycling in a two-hour workout in roughly 36 hours. If you have a high-fat or high-protein diet, or don't eat at all, you will need at least five days to replenish the energy.
Diet
Eating too few carbohydrates can affect your fitness and "put you at increased risk of injury and illness," according to "Swim, Bike, Run." If you're bicycling one hour per day, proper nutrition means getting 60 percent of your calories from carbohydrates, 25 percent from fats and 15 percent from protein. Most of your carbohydrates should be the complex carbohydrates in beans, fruits, grains and vegetables rather than the carbs from sugar. Depending on your weight, you should also eat 300 to 500 calories more on days you're biking more than an hour.
Water
Water is more important than any other nutrient, "Swim, Bike, Run" reports. A 2 percent loss of body water will impair your performance, a 5 percent loss will cause a "substantial" performance decline and a 10 percent loss puts you at risk of heatstroke and even death. You can determine how much water weight you are losing by weighing yourself before and after your workout while drinking "plenty of fluids" during your bike ride. If you weigh at least 2 percent less after your workout, you should drink more water during your future workouts.
References
- "Dr. Dean Ornish's Program For Reversing Heart Disease"; Dr. Dean Ornish; 1996
- "The Well Adult"; Dr. Mike Samuels and Nancy Samuels; 1988
- "Start Strong, Finish Strong: Prescriptions for a Lifetime of Great Health"; Dr. Kenneth H. Cooper, Tyler C. Cooper, William Proctor; 2007
- "Swim, Bike, Run"; Glenn Town and Todd Kearney; 1994
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