Tired legs

Mark Drayton said:

I'm cycling approx 80 - 100 miles a week at the moment, mostly at a reasonable pace. My typical
week is as follows:

Sunday: club ride, 40ish miles on pretty flat terrain, 17-18mph average Tuesday: evening
chaingang, 15 - 20 miles at about 17mph to get there and back and about 10 - 15 miles at a hard
pace with the group Thursday: 10 mile TT in evening or soon to be 30ish mile road race Saturday:
rest or perhaps shortish ride with intervals

The problem is that more often than not my legs feel slow or tired during the day. They're really
not keen on moving when asked! I often feel awful on the bike for a few miles at the start of a
ride but then my legs "wake up" and I start to ride better.

I'm not losing weight, so I presume I'm eating enough. I get 7.5 to 8 hours sleep a night and
don't feel conventionally tired during the day.

How can I reduce this jaded feeling? I do stretch before riding and try to remember to stretch
afterwards, though I often fail this. I'd like to up the amount of training I'm doing, but I'm
reluctant to until I work out why I don't seem to recover very quickly.

When are you eating in relation to when you ride?

How long have you been cycling at this rate?

I get tired legs normally when I haven't eaten much before cycling i.e. cycling mid-morning, and
they were particularly bad when I was just getting back into the swing of things (now I just have
sore knees!).

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Mark Drayton said:

The problem is that more often than not my legs feel slow or tired during the day.

Eat-a more pasta, like-a mamma says :-)

Dojn't get hung up about it, though - riding hard makes your legs hurt. No pain no gain. My legs
often feel like lead if I ride home at nutter pace (7.5 miles at over 20mph average), and when I
ride fast to and from work on a Wednesday and then do a club ride with a couple of big hills in the
evening, I am hard pressed to keep out of the bottom ring most of the way to work next day. As
summer progresses the hurt vanishes and is replaced by (a) more speed and (b) nice comments from
Myra about your legs[1].

[1] Terms and conditions apply, your mileage may vary.

Guy
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Quoted message said:

Mark Drayton said:

The problem is that more often than not my legs feel slow or tired during the day.

If it's any consolation...

I ride 5 days per week, approx. 350-400km. I ride hard, averaging 30+k so I would class myself as a
'seasoned rider'. 3 weeks ago I pushed myself over the limit on a 40k TT into a head wind and my
legs were like lead for the following 4 days, with aches still being felt 7 days after!

As long as it's not pain from an incorrect set-up, ride through it, it will do you good.

I stress though, make sure it's not from an incorrect set-up otherwise you could screw up ya knees
etc. for good.

--
Mark
____________________________
Practice does not make perfect... Perfect practice makes perfect

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In article said:

Mark Drayton said:

The problem is that more often than not my legs feel slow or tired during the day. They're
really not keen on moving when asked! I often feel awful on the bike for a few miles at the
start of a ride but then my legs "wake up" and I start to ride better.

[..]

How can I reduce this jaded feeling? I do stretch before riding and try to remember to stretch
afterwards, though I often fail this. I'd like to up the amount of training I'm doing, but I'm
reluctant to until I work out why I don't seem to recover very quickly.

When are you eating in relation to when you ride?

If I'm going for an evening TT or chaingang (both start at 7ish), I might have a small snack
beforehand and eat my main meal afterwards. I often feel sick when trying hard, and with a full meal
inside I'd probably feel worse!

I eat breakfast (porridge) before going on a morning ride.

Quoted message said:

How long have you been cycling at this rate?

I've been doing a base of about 60 miles a week for most of the winter but I've only started the
chaingang and TTs in the last month or so. I hope I'm just 'wearing in'!

The tired feeling doesn't seem to affect me, though: last night I had tired feeling legs and did a
TT I was very pleased with (7th out of 21 on my 3rd TT!).

Cheers,

Mark Drayton

Quoted message said:

That's good to hear. Now he'll need a computer so he knows how much faster he is than Mum ;-)

He is speeding up quite a bit now. He's just starting to notice the benefits of cycling on his
stamina and on his physique - he was showing off his developing calf muscles last night - LOL 🙂

So far he's now really starting to enjoy his cycling and is chuffed to ribbons with his new bike,
especially since he's been promised carbon forks for it ;-)

Cheers, helen s

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In article said:

Mark Drayton said:

I've been doing a base of about 60 miles a week for most of the winter but I've only started the
chaingang and TTs in the last month or so. I hope I'm just 'wearing in'!

I would think give it another month or so to see how it goes. Has the winter training been
outdoors? i.e. real cycling.

Yeah, nearly all of it was outdoors.

I'm pretty sure it's down to training volume. I'll have a few easy days before resuming my current
workload and see if that's enough to catch up.

Cheers,

Mark Drayton