my58vw

Many of you know now that I have a condition that limits my power levels (for now) among other things for cycling. Other than with sprints and climbing where raw power is needed it is not a big deal. It has very little effect of my endurance, I can ride centuries, metrics, back to back long days, etc. Basically the lack of power is related to my body requiring more time to build muscle because it repairs slower after a hard workout. That means I need more recovery and am prone to overtraining if I train too hard to soon together.

I have never done two long hard rides back to back due to this, i.e. two rides over 50+ miles back to back where they were both hard. I tried it before and ended up abandoning and going home on the second one. Today I tried it again and had very simular cirumstances. I rode a metric yesterday and a half century today, both were hard fast rides with very fast technical paceline work. On Sunday I was quite tired after the ride and my quads and hamstrings amoung others was sore. I went out Monday (today) to ride my own pace (singlespeed, spinning) but the group did not want to ride slow so I tried to go fast... here is what happened.

I started feeling real weak abot mile 14 of hard riding and had to back down. I started feeling weak all over and was having trouble keeping any reasonable pace. I ended up off the back of the group and spinning the next 7 miles to the regroup alone. At one point I just had to sit down and wait for the slow group to come up and pick me up. The funny thing was that I felt like I had lots left in my legs, but like something just ran out. It was not a bonk because I had eaten plenty of food and was hydrated, I just could not get motivated to pedal.

On the way back my body finally started shutting down about mile 45 or 50, i.e. pain started, muscles started getting weak, I got wobbily on the bike, etc. The last 5 miles were at something like 13 MPH.

Now is this feeling "normal" for someone recovering? I am starting to doubt if what I feel is a condition of what I have or if it is normal part of riding. It is kind of like... smell the roses... what roses, I do not smell anything...

Thanks as always...