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Old 06-16-19, 07:58 PM
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mpbkk
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Wanted to share my own experience on this, not many posts online about this, happy to have found this thread.

im a competitive (amateur) cyclist, and for about 2 years I have been continually cramping during events at around 2 hours into the race. I train hard, eat a proper diet based on my training, I sodium load before and during my events (hot climate), and I always made sure to drink my electrolytes on the bike. Basically, I have always followed a regime which is supposed to help prevent cramps. I have had my blood tested twice in the past 2 years, vitamin levels are fine, but we did introduce magnesium supplements to provide some help. Without going into extreme details of all these things, just take my word I cover my bases, I love to race my bike and go to win.

So, I started keeping notes after awhile to find out why in some events I did not cramp, and compared all the power data, temperatures of climate, my diet leading up to the event, etc. What stood out was a few particular events over 3 hours, high intensity, no cramps, just standard fatigue. In the events where I cramped, it was never a bonk per say, it was always my quads or calve muscles lock up and are extremely painful to extend. In these instances, I can usually find an awkward position to help me finish the race, but I can never get out of the saddle, or I’ll basically shred the muscle or almost fall over. But always same thing, around 2 hours, after a few surges/attacks in the race. This at first made me think my training was missing this, which it wasn’t really, but I added more focus on microbursts, vo2max, all the high end power stuff.

Few years back a guy saw how many gels I ate in an event, which I was showing and stating how I still cramped even though I stayed within my limits of effort and was consuming planned energy via gels. He mentioned, you know some people get cramps or sick from those things. At first my reaction was like huh? No way, these are supposed to do the opposite. Didn’t think much of it, but then last year I was watching Lionel Sanders prep for Kona on his YouTube, and he showed how we was gonna consume all his fuel via fluids.

I did that in a few races over the past 6 months or so (fluids only, no Maltodextrin ingredient), no cramps or muscle locking. I did however use GU Gels in some races also, which I always take around 60-90 minutes into an event. Boom, cramped in all those events. And again, these are events where I trained and prepared well ahead of time, the plan was to podium in these events. Some of the events I still finished top 5-10 (typically around 100-200 riders), but in extreme pain from the legs being locked up.

So, this past weekend I did a short 2 hour training ride. Usually don’t need gels for something like that, but I had one with me so ate it anyways to give me a little pickme up. That’s another thing, I never cramp in training, but I also never eat gels in training (expensive). So I had that Gu gel at 60-70 minutes into the session, legs started to lock up 20 minutes later. The following day, only took cliff bars with me, high intensity and twice the duration, full sprints and racing parts of the ride, hotter temps, no cramps or locking. I was literally just pounding myself to try and cramp, wasn’t happening, just fatigue was setting in.

After years of doing my head in, I’m pretty close to chalking the muscle locking up due to Maltodextrin. As everyone stated above, when you finally can narrow it down, and you start looking up its side effects, and cramping is listed, you just do a OMG, sorta shake your head...

Time will tell though, I need a few more races to prove this, but I will come back and update once I know.
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