Harvieu25

I've been trying to figure out if I am simply running out of muscle glycogen, or am experiencing muscle fatigue.

On a riding day I will start the day a liter of water followed by 1k cal of fruit. When I start my ride I am fine, but at about the 1.5 hr mark I can sense some fatigue, but I can still keep pace until the 2 hr mark. That is when I experience the dead legs, burning legs, locked up legs, whatever you want to call it.

Now, during the first two hrs, on a climb unless I go very hard, I won't get the burn in my leg muscles, but occasionally do if its a tough climb, but after cresting can feel them clear up. I assume this is lactate entering and leaving my legs...

I usually do not eat on a ride, haven't except for on a 4 hr ride, but I stay hydrated enough to pee every hr or so.

This dead leg feeling will usually stay with me all weekend when it hits. Fri Sat and Sun are my only days to ride each week. That will be fixed come spring.

I got the dead legs 2 hrs into my 3 hr ride on Fri and my average speed went from 15+ mph down to about 11 mph.
When it comes its like a light switch and once its here the rest of my ride is in the small chain ring (compact) and the first half of the cog set. I basically am reduced to barely making any grade at 6-7mph and coasting down all hills.

The rest of me feels fine, my mind is sharp and I have the will to ride much longer but the legs just don't want to.

Is this something I can learn to push through, or is it a nutritional thing?

By the way I eat a totally clean whole foods diet and get 2500-3000 cal a day.

wolfchild

I don't know, maybe you're drinking too much water and over hydrating and diluting all the electrolytes in your body which can lead to muscle cramps and weakness. Plus you're eating fruit which also has a lot of water in it. It may also be lack of protein, are you sure you're eating enough protein ??

Harvieu25

60+ grams a day.

If you are trying to help, fine. But if this is gonna end up with you downing my diet choice then please don't pollute my thread.

wolfchild

I think 60 grams sounds a little bit low especially for somebody who exercises and is physically active....Remember that about 10% of your protein which you ingest gets wasted and goes towards energy production during your rides...Have you tried increasing your protein intake slightly and see if that helps ??...I am not interested in polluting your thread...I am just assuming that your problem may have something to do with not recovering... and manipulating your nutrition a little bit would probably solve the problem

intransit1217

I'm no nutritionist but I thought pretty much the same thing. A litre of water to start? Wow. Also, different fruits have different compounds so I would suggest sticking with the more acidic ones. They would likely carry more electrolytes. Or bring a bottle of electrolyte and swig some.

Harvieu25

OK, thank you. The body also recycles protein, how much I don't recall. I can try upping it and see. According to cronometer I get all the minerals I need usually X2 or 3. Sorry on the initial post, I meant .5 liter, then the fruit but have tried oatmeal when I have time before the ride. I seem to do better on fruit though.

I am also going to try and take a medjool date or two every 20 minutes and see if that helps.

DrIsotope

I don't think this thread will be of much help until people are aware of your physical size and general level of cycling fitness (as in, how long have you been at it.) For all we know, you're pounding at 50rpm and just burning your legs up.

That said, if your legs are going dead on you after an 1.5-2 hours @ 16mph, there are certainly some nutrition and fitness/fitment issues that need to be addressed.

Aubergine 

I've found that I need to drink electrolytes on a long day. I just mix up a bottle with Vitalyte powder and drink it throughout the ride. When I get home, I have another glass with the Vitalyte because it noticeably helps my recovery.

On on a trip, it's easier to carry Nuun tablets or the like. Those worked well also. So even though you are hydrated and eating well, you need something extra to keep your body working. Worth a try at least!

good luck.

Heathpack 

If you are physically fit and well-trained, you should be able to ride fasted without taking in any food for around 3 hours of pretty intense cycling. If you're less fit and not too well-trained, you might need to eat carbs on your ride.

You say you are starting your day with 1000 cal of fruit? That is a huge amount of fruit. It would be something like 3 bananas PLUS 3 apples and ALSO 4 oranges. Is that really what you're doing?

If you have 1000 cal of fruit prior to your ride, you are likely diverting blood flow from your muscles to your gastrointestinal tract for the purposes of digestion. Ok if you're riding a leisurely to moderate pace. But likely negatively impacting performance if you're working intensely.

You are probably not glycogen-depleted by virtue of your cycling itself. But you could be if you're not replacing glycogen post ride. I'm also not sure why you think 60 gm protein per day is adequate for you. Depending on your size, it's likely low. Where did you get your protein goal? My guess is your biggest problem is going to be that you're trying to train, but not providing your body enough protein to build muscle.

Harvieu25

45yo, cycling since last sept, never athletic before that, ate like crap (SAD), smoked from 16-43.5yo. 68" tall 135lbs, (lost 50 lbs in 2014 when I started eating a whole foods diet)

I'm not fit, that is why I started cycling, too much energy and had to start doing something. Good food does that you know....

I am a spinner though, 105-110 rpm is my preferred cadence, 90 feels like I'm mashing. Only time I get lower than that is a steep climb where my fitness/power won't let me sustain my chosen cadence in the shortest gear 34/29.

Ave HR on most rides by myself is 135-150 depending on what I am doing that day.
When I first started I rode 6.5 miles and was toast.

Harvieu25

Typically bananas/dates, but minimum 2 hours before the ride starts.

Heathpack 

I'm a woman and weigh less than you. I eat nearly twice as much protein as you do. I do this intentionally for the purposes of building muscle from my cycling training. I can speak intelligently to the subject of protein intake if you are interested. When you train, you are breaking down muscle. You need protein to build that muscle. It will be hard for you to ever get fit if your protein intake is inadequate.

Not sure why you eat 1000 cal of fruit first thing in the morning. But I doubt that's a problem other than its a huge dose of sugar to start your day. Personally, I'd eat less before the ride and more during the ride.

Since you are untrained and new to cycling, your most likely issues relate to fitness and recovery, not inadequate energy reserves/glycogen depletion.

If you want to improve your cycling and fitness, you should read about training and fitness-related nutrition. You should be systematic in your training, include easy days and hard days and rest days/weeks. You should build volume slowly. The basics of nutrition are: easy-to-digest carbs before and during rides, then carb/protein immediately post ride, and adequate protein throughout the rest of the day. All the while manipulating calories to maintain your desired body weight. Gradually decrease what you eat before/during rides until you can ride 2-3 hours at a pretty decent intensity, it will take a while, maybe 6 months.

BTW, there is no absolute reason to train your body to ride fasted. If you mostly just want to ride 1-4 hours at moderate intensity and you're happy with your weight, just go ahead and eat on the rides. The main reasons to try to become able to ride without eating is because you plan on riding eventually in a scenario in which digesting or consuming food becomes a limiter (riding intensely while racing or doing ultra events) or your trying to lose weight/limit calories. Otherwise, riding sans food is not a training objective unto itself.

Carbonfiberboy 

Lack of protein in your diet will keep you from getting stronger, but I don't think that alone would make you feel like you're bonking after only 2 hours. I think there are two possible explanations:

1) It's the 1000 calories of fruit. Because you only ride overfueled, and because you're a new rider, you've developed no fat burning ability. Which might not make a difference other than the fact that slowing down from 14 to 11 after only 2 hours is one heck of a cut in watts. But more, it's that your blood sugar is in the toilet. That's probably because of the 1000 calories of fruit. Solution: try this - don't eat the fruit before the ride. Instead, take it with you. One medjool date is supposedly ~66 calories. Instead of eating one an hour, eat one every 20 minutes. Just try that. If that fixes the problem without changing anything else, then we can recommend more permanent solutions.

2) You're exhausted. The drop in output is because the hormones that regulate your ability to go hard are in the toilet. That could happen to a new cyclist who rode too hard, too much, and never took a week's break. Solution: If that's you, try taking that week's break. If that fixes the problem without changing anything else, we can recommend more permanent solutions.

GravelMN

My suggestions:

- cut back on the fruit and add some almonds for some calcium and magnesium (if they are lightly salted you'll also get some additional sodium). Remember that when it comes to electrolytes its not just about quantity, balance is also important.
- cut back to 500-700 calories pre-ride and fuel with 100-200 calories per hour of fruit and nut mixture during your ride.
- if you are urinating every hour while also sweating a lot, you may actually be overhydrating which can result in electrolyte imbalances. Endurance athletes can push themselves into hyponatremia by overhydrating and losing excessive amounts of sodium to urination and perspiration while hydrating with excessive amounts of plain water. I don't think you are to that point yet, but you may be flirting with it, which can result in muscle cramps and fatigue. If symptoms progress to headache and nausea, you are getting into risky territory. Add a bit of electrolyte replacement or even Morton Lite Salt (half sodium chloride, half potassium chloride) to your water bottles and hydrate until your urine is light yellow/amber but not completely clear and you can urinate a good amount every 2-3 hours. If your urine gets dark colored (concentrated), you are producing low volumes of urine, or you are going more than 3 hours without urinating, increase your hydration. There used to be a mentality among athletes that there was no such thing as too much water, but today the science tells us that isn't true.
- you can't just "push through" muscle fatigue but with conditioning your tolerances and resilience will improve. Remember that improvement doesn't come when you train hard, it come when you rest and nourish your muscles after training hard.

wolfchild

I stand by what I said in my previous posts. I don't think OPs problem has anything to do with bonking but it's an issue with recovery/nutrition...Having the "dead leg feeling" for a few days like OP said in his first post...To me it sounds a lot like not recovering due to low protein intake and electrolyte imbalances due to drinking too much water...Your pre-ride nutrition also needs to change, skip the fruit and sugar and eat some easily digestable starch such as white rice or potatoes with some easily digestable protein.

SlowerGuy

So if I "need to eat carbs" on a ride after just one hour, I am not "physically fit and well-trained"?

Geez, now I know that I'm a loser, thanks for claryfing that.

Oh wait, maybe there might be other criteria for defining whether someone is "physically fit and well-trained"?

Heathpack 

Yes, I am making to connection between fitness and the need to consume carbs while on rides. The ability to mobilze fat as fuel is one of those things that improve with training. That's a pretty well-established fact of training.

Nope, if you need to eat after 1 hour riding, you're not a loser. But you probably could improve your fitness.

And yes, there are indeed multiple factors that are markers of fitness. The ability to mobilize fat as fuel is only one of them.

ThermionicScott 

Definitely not bonking, then.

Carbonfiberboy 

Sorry for you that you took that personally. Since this is a cycling forum, we do tend to define fitness in terms of cycling fitness, i.e. aerobic and anaerobic ability on the bike. And yes, someone who needs to eat early on every ride is not yet well-trained. Been there. We've all been there. Therefore none of us are losers. OTOH, depending on the length and intensity of the planned ride, we may choose or need to eat right from the start. But that's different from needing to eat early on every ride. It's a many-year journey of thousands of miles.

dim

this is what works for me (before going on a "longish" fast ride)....

breakfast: cooked oatmeal (cooked in milk) with a chopped ripe banana and sprinkled with granola (a granola that has loads of nuts)

just before the ride: approx 500ml of water .... during the ride, I don't eat unless I'm hungry, and if I do get hungry, I have a breakfast nut bar that has a chocolate coating (it's called 9 bar ... super seeds original Carob hit) ... and a few sips of water

I also carry a few dates for a sugar hit, but have never needed them

straight after the ride, I drink approx 500ml of fresh full fat milk that is mixed with a tablespoon of cocoa powder and a double expresso (I make this in the morning just before I leave, and have it in a separate water bottle)

I do eat alot when I get home though (I eat whatever I crave ... sometimes I order a pizza, sometimes it's leftovers from the night before (roast chicken, rice, gravy, salad and cooked veg)

I have not ridden a century yet, so I think I will need to take some extra food when I attemp my first

I read somewhere that a guy who does loads of centuries takes purity baby food with him and eats that during his rides (the ones that are made from fruit)

one of my clients done a grueling race in france that was over a few days, and she says that along the way, they were given salted peanuts and jelly beans

pdlamb

It's not clear to me if this happens every "riding day" or if OP rides three days in a row every week. If you're doing 2-4 hours each of three successive days, it might be glycogen depletion on days 3 and 4. It's really hard to fully reload glycogen in a single day -- part of why tours get tough. The liver may be generating enough glucose to keep the mind happy (ah, those endorphins!) while there's not enough to fully fuel the legs.

wolfchild

I don't recall anybody on this forum ever calling somebody a looser for eating on a bike. Taking offence when truth is presented isn't going to improve your performance and fitness. There are some very experienced riders on this forum and instead of being offended at their comments you should use their comments and their experiences as a motivation to improve your fitness and performance.

DrIsotope

I think a generally unmentioned problem around these parts is how certain subforums (I'm looking at you, 41) have applied some sort of stigma to eating when on the bike. Some days, I feel hungry during the ride, so I eat. Some days I don't... so I don't. But if I'm planning on riding, well, anything past 40 miles, I start eating early, because I know I'm going to need it later. Every single rider's needs are different. By my 5th ride of the week, I'm usually eating whatever gets within arm's reach.

Drew Eckhardt 

Your glycogen is fine - you feel running out in your whole body, not just your legs.

You're trying to ride too fast for over two hours, and probably riding too much at an inappropriately high intensity like many (or most) of us did as self-coached athletes who didn't yet know better.

You have some aerobic effort (through your aerobic threshold, AeT, VT1, 2mmol/L of lactate in your blood, LT2) which you could sustain until you needed to sleep if you'd built up endurance averaging enough daily hours. That uses type I slow-twitch muscle fibers powered mostly by your oxidative energy system which runs on fat and doesn't cause waste products to build up like lactate and hydrogen ions.

Increasing intensity recruits type IIa fast oxidative-glycolytic muscle fibers which use your glycolytic energy system powered by glycogen stored in your liver and muscle fibers. Those stop working when you run out of accessible glycogen (you have about 100g in your liver for 400 Calories worth, and another 400g / 1600 Calories in muscle fibers but no way to get it back in your bloodstream so you can't use what's in your upper body or even type IIx muscle fibers) and bonk, or you have too many waste products in your system. More intensity means you reach those limits sooner.

Your body would rather rely on glycogen and fast-twitch fibers, so when you exceed your aerobic threshold you aren't stressing your slow-twitch fibers and causing them to improve. Your aerobic threshold is where your breathing becomes rhythmic, the pace is no longer conversational, and the highest effort you can maintain over 3-5 hours with an even split between first and second half. You need to ride more below it to raise your sustainable pace over longer durations.

Critics aren't wrong saying going slow makes you good at going slow, but overlook that slow becomes faster. Mark Allen dropping his training pace to his aerobic threshold of 8:15 miles raised it to a 5:20 pace after which he set the 2:40 Ironman triathlon marathon split record in 1989 which still stands. Kurt Searvogel started his annual mileage record attempt (76,076) at 17 MPH although within six months his speed increased to about 20 MPH riding a daily double century.

You're probably also not riding hard enough on your tough days to get appreciably faster. You want to work harder than your anaerobic threshold (AnT, VT2, 4mmol/L lactate, Lactate Threshold, Lactate Threshold Heart Rate, FTP, Critical Power), as in ride intervals as hard as you can for 7-10 minutes.

Finally, you need a lower volume/lower intensity recovery week out of every 3-4 to allow adaptation to occur. When you neglect that you get more tired and risk health problems without getting faster.

Speed is a horrible metric because it's too situational. When I naively "rode hard" I struggled to average 17 MPH for an hour on flat terrain with my heart rate averaging 150 . With enough 3x10 and 4x10 minute interval sessions as hard as possible and plenty of miles below my aerobic threshold I managed 20.5 miles in an hour out and back at 159 and was still going 15 minutes later because that wasn't too hard. 17.5 miles out-and-back in an hour got me a 126 average heart rate. I've yet to figure out how long I could sustain a pace like that - I spent 8:45 last weekend averaging 134 although I'm slower since losing riding time after crashing. Bigger guys (I'm 135-137 pounds at cycling weight) can manage 200W and 20 MPH at their aerobic threshold.

Be patient because it takes years to reach your potential.

SlowerGuy

Hmm, so what is it?
One poster says "not yet well-trained", another says "probably could improve your fitness"?
Is it both?

You wrote:
"define fitness in terms of cycling fitness, i.e. aerobic and anaerobic ability on the bike."

This is something I can agree with.
So since this was about "3 hours" of riding, it's about "aerobic" fitness.
AFAICT a well-establish metric for that is something like FTP (or CP'60), expressed in W or W/kg.
Would you say that someone with an FTP of 4 W/kg or higher is "fit"?