Krazy Koz

I started dieting and seriously riding about nine months ago in an attempt to lose weight (and so far have lost 39 pounds), but all throughout I have been plagued by a problem.

I ride typically two to four times a week (about fifty miles total) and after one long ride or two normal rides my legs will be sore after the ride. If I persist riding, the soreness gets progressively worse and after enough rides, it becomes impossible to continue because of the soreness. I have combated this by riding every other day, or taking weekends off (!) and so on. The problem is that I want to ride more regularly, and ultimately make it my primary form of transportation, but the soreness obviously prevents that.

My suspicion is that due to my diet, my body is not able to build new muscle, hence the soreness. I am currently consuming 2000 calories per day, which is up from as low as 1600 about a month ago. I am male, 25 years, 5' 6'', and currently 161 lbs. I closely manage my diet, and few months ago made certain to start consuming anywhere from 60-70 grams of protein every day in hopes of boosting my muscle mass, but obviously I've had no luck.

I am pretty happy with my weight for right now and feel more committed to cycling than losing weight, so I am thinking about chucking the diet about fifteen pounds from the finish line. Would that help? I am simply assuming that it is my calorie deficit that is keeping my body from building new muscle, but that is just a guess. Does anybody have some knowledge or advice they could offer? I feel really torn between my desire to get to my ideal weight and my desire to ride.

thirdeye73

your daily calorie intake is way too low, as is your protein. try to get at least 0.6-0.8 grams of protein per/lb of bodyweight. check out this site for good, scientifically-sound advice on sports nutrition...

www.johnberardi.com

roadbuzz

Some general information that might help, tho' you probably already know most of it
https://outside.away.com/outside/body...-20050715.html

What kind intensity are you doing? If it's mostly aerobic, and you're spinning rather than mashing, soreness should not be a problem unless you're so starved out your body just can't recover.

DannoXYZ 

Make sure you stretch before and afterwards. Getting a massage afterwards really help.

Also EAT AFTER YOUR RIDE, IMMEDIATELY!!! About 1-1.5gm carbs per kg body-weight is the mimimum for maximum recovery. Your body is low on glycogen and it will convert stored fat AND protein from muscles to restore it's energy stores. Protein is a much faster and more efficient conversion to glycogen. So if you do not eat right away after a ride, your body will disassemble perfeclty good muscles to store up energy for the next ride. I suspect this is why you're so sore, your muscles are getting a double-whammy. Not only have they been torn apart by the workout, they may not be getting enough protein to rebuild and may actually be punished by being ripped apart to make carbs.

Third, watch your gears, pick easy gears and spin your legs. You generate more power and burn more calories if you exert 100-lbs all around 360-degress than if you mash 200lbs for only 120-degrees. You'll be able to keep it up longer as well since you won't be exerting as much force. There's a peak amount of force your muscles can generate and the higher and higher you push close to your maximum, the more inefficient it becomes.

Fourth part is training, don't do four rides that are identical. There are so many kinds of workouts with a specific training goal and result, that if you do two rides that are the same during a week, you've sacrificed maximum improvement-rate because there was another ride that may have been more beneficial than repeating a previous ride. So... break up your rides to have more intensity AND distance (not on the same day). Do one ride earlier in the week of only 10-miles, 5-miles warm-up and on the way back do some 100% sprints. Another ride of the week, like Sat. or Sun should be longer than you're doing now. Take it easy and do 20-25miles. This will burn more fat than two 10-12.5mile rides because you'll only need 5-miles of warm up once, then it's a full 15-20miles of workout.

The idea is to improve your overall fitness. Being able to metabolize and generate more watts per hour and burn more calories per hour will end up giving you higher-rate of weight-loss. Focus on the fitness, not the diet.

lsd87

This might bit not be a diet issue, but rather a bicycle fit problem. If possible try another bike or see your lbs...might be saddle position or some other adjustment. I used to have a similar problem until I switched my ride.

jrennie

Give your stated specs I would tend to agree with lsd87 it might be a fit or lack of muscle training. You distance isn't very far, my opinion would be to decrease intensity and take a couple of slow recovery rides and see if the pain subsides

Diggy18

I don't know about the soreness in particular, but I've had lots of problems with trying to cycle and lift weights while cutting back on calories. One of the problems I had was feeling too mopey to be able to do an intense workout, and I rarely hit my modest lifting goals for each week. The other problem was that I wasn't building muscle.

After I upped my calories (with nutritious food, not junk) I think I've actually become leaner, and I definitely have more energy to work-out.

But it also sounds like maybe it could just be that your bike is mal-adjusted.

teamawe

I dont see bike fit as causing quad soreness, knee's sure, but the quads would adjust after 2 rides to a new angle. Your legs are STARVING for fuel, you are feeling them canabolise muscle tissue to fuel your cycling.

At 25 and 161 pounds I'm thinking you need to forget about any kind of dieting. Eat 3k a day and lots of carbs (standard endurance athlete diet) coupled with the increase in riding you mention and my bet is you will continue to build muscle and lean up.

re-read what Danno said, its correct.

Krazy Koz

I meant to reply to the bicycle fit comments yesterday, but I ended up pulling a double shift.

At any rate, when I first heard the fit comment, I did about three fit tests (I even had my girlfriend take one measurement for me) and all came to the same conclusion: my fit is fine. My inseam is 31.5 inches, which after a few calculations translates to a "small" compact road frame fit and a 17" inch mtb fit, which are the sizes of my bikes.

Also, I went have had this persistent soreness before. I went on a weekend hiking adventure two months ago, and was sore for days afterward just like after riding.

I really appreciate everybody's input and I am going to try to implement them. Honestly, 3k seems kind of high, but that's probably just because I have been dieting for so long. Also, I have been trying to spin more on my rides rather than power through (which I had been doing a lot), and it has helped a bit.

cinnamonbelle

Some stuff here (not vouching for or against):
https://www.acu-cell.com/dis-mus.html

I was looking for something on low-carbing as I've read (can't find now, argh) about how muscle cramps and lactic acid buildup can happen while a person is restricting carbs for the first week or so. Might be worth a serious Googling adventure if indeed you are low carbing as part of the diet.