Fitness or Adaptation?

You can purchase a heart rate monitor very reasonably and a power meter, not so cheaply. By using these devices and comparing data you can map your progress. Heart rate against wattage produced and calories burned along with your cadence.
Unless you are a serious competitior or have some goals and lot of money I suggest just enjoying the sport and being patient with your progress. I have know good cyclist that trained for a year to take 60 seconds off a 100 mile ride. Seems to me you are coming along ok.

You've done twice the distance faster, and mention you could go even better. You sound fitter to me. Your cardio is improving as a result of the adaptations caused by more riding. Improved aerobic capacity is just one of the adaptations. Others would/could be: increased muscle mass or density, improved capacity to manage lactic acid, improved capacity to metabolize fats at higher intensities. Unless I am misunderstanding you, the term "fitness" as you are using it, IS the adaptation. Btw, don't sell yourself short - if my cruising speed found a 2mph gain I'd be ecstatic.

Quote:Originally Posted by jhuskey [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG] You can purchase a heart rate monitor very reasonably and a power meter, not so cheaply. By using these devices and comparing data you can map your progress. Heart rate against wattage produced and calories burned along with your cadence.
Unless you are a serious competitior or have some goals and lot of money I suggest just enjoying the sport and being patient with your progress. I have know good cyclist that trained for a year to take 60 seconds off a 100 mile ride. Seems to me you are coming along ok.

Don't get me wrong; I'm thrilled with my progress, especially given my limited timeframe. But since I'm doing this more for life than for competition, I'm just wondering if I'm doing it the right way for my goals. Also keep in mind that my other goal was back health, which I didn't state above, so the increased muscle in the lower body is a huge boon, as is the natural movement in the spine that biking causes, so long as I keep the gearing fairly light and don't try to grind up hills. It doesn't help that my father-in-law just had a minor heart attack, so I'm paranoid that I'm not getting enough cardio out of the riding. I ride with a HRM, but don't have a power meter. I can see how heart rate vs. watts would be a good measure, though I doubt that's in my future anytime soon. I was just wondering if I should periodically do some type of test, like walk on a treadmill at a certain pace for a certain time and monitor my HR during. Something that would isolate the muscle from the cardio so I could measure it independently. Note: I'm not sure where my paragraph separations are going.

Everyone is different and you may be coming along great, it seems so. I don't think anyone can give you any guarantees. I think maybe you need to think about where you want to be in a month, 6 month and a year. If you wanna drop weight, increase endurance , speed, lower heat rate.