"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - I gots me no speed

I had a crit. two weekends ago and a road race today. Both were 4/5 fields and pretty damn fast (main group averaging 27 and 26 respectively).

I have done worse in these two races than any others earlier in the season. My legs have just been feeling like crap. I missed a huge break today because my legs simply couldn't seem to accelerate.

I took 3 days of light recovery rides before the crit and 4 days of light recovery before todays race. I use various methods for recovery including: stretching, soaking legs in hot water, massage. I eat pretty well, with the issue being more surplus than a lack of anything.

I just don't seem to be able to recover. My legs just refuse to get any less sore, no matter how light I take it. If I rest them anymore I won't be doing any real rides outside of my races.

Am I doing something wrong? Any suggestions?

Try just not riding for a 3 days? Your "recovery" rides might still be too high intesity. Personally that's my problem.

Endurox or Accelerade post ride?

Protein and l-glutamine?

Nothing sounds wrong other than possible diet stuff...unless you're recovering from some serious overtraining in previous weeks.

yeah, the intensity of a simple recovery ride is sometimes deceiving.

A teammate and I used to ride no more than 12mph on Mondays. For about 90 minutes.
Just turning the pedals, really.
Other riders would FLY past us at 22mph, and we'd fight the temptation to jump on.

Golf is also a great way to recover. Believe it or not.

maybe too much recovery. It's always good to do a few hard efforts the day before the race to prime the pump. 3 days of recovery before a race is likely to make you sluggish. Also, how intense was your warm up. For a crit, you need to have done some maximal efforts in warm up, so you're ready when the race goes 29mph from the gun.

How much SLEEP are you getting?
Much of today's society is sleep deprived.

I'll fix you...do this:

ride 3 days straight with no load.

just 2 hours each day easy spinning in your lowest gear. higher cadence the better.

each day for dinner eat a giant pizza with lotsa chicken and hamburger on it. chase it with tons of water.

do your massage and stetches.

your legs will come around. hogging out and spinning will revive racers overtraining

i think you're losing form by doing too many recovery days in a row. and you might be low on protien as well, if you're sore all the time.

Protien is not a problem, I get more than a gram/kilo bodyweight per day. I've never paid attention to l-glutamine, though it's in the protein mix that I use.

Since January, I've been getting between 7 and 8 hours of sleep a night, which I find quite nice compared to being quite sleep depreived before.

This weekend, I don't have a race. So I am going to try a more conventional scheudule of alternating one hard day and one rest day. I'll see if this suits me better, so by saturday I'll have the answet to wether too many recovery days in a row could be the cause.

Thanks for the responses

For my recovery I spin (90-105RPMs) at no more than 170 watts. This means trainer for me, but it keeps the HR down, and lets me recover. The supplements above can also be very helpful (particularly the endurox). How are you doing on sleep? Are you taking a multimineral? Minerals are necessary for recovery and you might not be getting enough? Lastly, are you carb loading prior to the races? I know that you are probablly adressing these items, but they are worth mentioning.

How much iron you getting? athletes need twice as much as regular folk do, I was getting really tired and sore and iron supplements have helped a lot, I generally eat a lot of chicken and not enough red meat.

It could be you've been overtraining. With a regular racing-schedule of several weekends a month, you can't ride as many training miles you've been doing in teh winter and early-spring. Typically just 1/2 is what you want to be doing.

Also have you kept track of your weight and body-fat percentage? It's easy with overtraining and inadequate recovery nutrition to lose muscle with lots of mileage. Which makes you lose a lot of sprinting snap and power. I know for me, my max-lift strength in the legs is typically only 50-60% at the end of a season compared to what I started with. I look the same and I weigh the same or a little less. However, body-fat percentage typically goes up by about 5%, meaning I lost muscle.

How much iron you getting? athletes need twice as much as regular folk do, I was getting really tired and sore and iron supplements have helped a lot, I generally eat a lot of chicken and not enough red meat.

Possibly true, but be careful w/ extra iron. A very common genetic defect results in hemochromatosis (excess iron) which can kill you.

don't forget it's pollen season, it can make you feel wiped out.

allergies have been hitting me hard off the bike recently. I'm going to put some of the blame there. How did I not think of that?

I get plenty of Iron.

Danno, I have no way to measure body-fat percentage regularly. So I can't see if its going up, but I do know that I've lost 6 pounds in the last 3 weeks. I can see that some of it was winter fat around the stomach, but I could very well be losing muscle mass to overtraining. My body has quite the perpensity to metabolize muscle (I was 147 at the end of last season, I'm now 162, and I had the weakest legs ever).

Thanks all for the comments

6lbs in three weeks is huge unless you were a) out of shape, or b) trying specifically to lose it. If neither is the case, then you need to look at overtraining as a BIG problem.