Avoiding Restart Fatigue
 

Whenever I stop, during a ride, for a break (especially a longer lunch break), I find that when I start up again, I feel especially tired. I've never liked that.

Today I tried some leg stretching during my break, and didn't notice the usual amount of restart fatigue. Anyone else seen that, or was it just a placebo thing?

Active cells make waste. While the supply of fresh nutrients comes to your muscles under pressure, the return route involves being "pumped" by the action of your muscles. If you stop cold, your muscles are still making waste products, but without any muscle contractions this stuff just accumulates. Stretching is a good way to keep it all moving. It may still be placebo, but there is a physiological reason for stretching to work.

The second problem involves the meal break. You only have so much blood, and if you put a meal into your belly, then your body will try to make use of it. That involves moving blood to the intestines to bring those goodies on board. It takes a while to stop this reroute and get the blood back into play for your muscles. If you have a big meal and then ride hard, this digestion interruptis will make itself known somewhere in the lower end of the digestive tract, and it won't be pretty.

One of my best riding buddies is like you and I am almost 180 degres out. He can't stand to take a break of more than a few minutes and unless we stop for a sit down lunch I seem fine. But the dfference may be how we ride. A mile or two before we schedule a stop I fall back a bit and down he rest of my electrolyte drink. I then slip into the small ring and ge my legs a break. In other words I have a cool down period before I stop. My bddy ill be stuck tothe wheel of some young turk all the way to the Coffee shop parking lot. By the time we have coffee or whatever the drink of choice might be you would swear by watching him that rigor mortis has set in. He has to completely warm up all over again. Five minutes after we are back on the road I am ready for the city limit sign sprint.

no question but that warming down before you stop makes a huge difference in how you'll feel after a stop, but imho if you are riding any distance you should be snacking all along the way and should really never stop for a big meal, or hardly any meal at all. I ride with a group that loves to go out for 50mi and stop half way through for lunch. I enjoy the company but not the stopping. I doubt that stretching does much but who knows? And if it's placebo..who cares?

That slowing down before a break is always good. I also restart slowly and spin a bit faster with less effort on the legs for 1/2 mile or so. Stops on a ride and I don't know how my ride buddies cope. They always lose me on the hills. Being good buddies they always wait for me and I say so that they can have a rest from the "Over Exertion" they put in up the hills. I get to them and ride straight past taking just a bit of pressure out whereas they have to restart on cold legs and a cold body. I keep telling them to slow down but they never listen:innocent:

But on longer rides I do not stop other than to refill bottles and take one break at around 65 miles. Take a full bottle-Something more substantial to eat and stretch. Only takes a couple of minutes but after that restart I am ready to go.

I am different... I almost always find that a break refreshes me and I am stronger afterwards -- especially after the first 4-5 miles... I usually start off up hill and often find myself feeling tired, with my heart rate up and muscles burning after 3-5 miles of constant pedaling. A short break does a world of good and I start back up far stronger than I was before I started my ride.

It's one of the reasons I usually feel more comfortable riding solo. I can stop anytime I want for as long (or short) as I want. And I do take a lot of breaks.

I've always wondered about you fella's who don't take breaks. I always thought it was just a macho thing. Thanks for correcting my misperception!

Actually you may not be different, you may just be experiencing something similar to what the OP describes. If you start out hard or, as you say, have to get into climbing before you are properly warmed up, your muscles will demand more fuel than your not-yet dilated vessels can provide, and you'll suffer fatigue. In those circumstances a short period of recovery is bound to help, and you're sure to feel stronger when you restart, if only because you are now warmed up and can cope better with the effort required. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if a period of gentle spinning in recovery mode didn't serve you even better than taking a break.


No, it's not a macho thing. Letting your legs be still allows waste products to accumulate, as B.Carfree has described. Even when coasting down a long descent it is better to keep turning the pedals, it avoids that "ouch" period when you again have to apply force at the bottom.

A related phenomenon is the feeling of dead legs after a rest day. Almost all the pros in stage races ride for several hours on the rest day to avoid having a bad day thereafter, and I have often experienced something similar on long tours. The day after a rest day always feels harder. I'm afraid I have no clue about the physiology of that one, though.

I would much rather ride 50 mi. without stopping than taking a break for anything more than 15 min. I suffer after a long break. I'm going to have to employ some of the suggestions mentioned here. Thanks for the topic and ideas.

I tend to feel refreshed after a break but notice that a lot of others feel more like you. On a bike trip once a fellow traveler suggested spending a few minutes lying on your back with your feet propped up on a wall or tree. The idea is to pull some blood down from your legs. Several who tried it reported good results - placebo?

Stretching before I start again works for me too.

I've also had even greater fatigue after having a big meal, especially if it's before a long climb. But I'm kinda known for eating ridiculously heavy stuff on rides.

I don't like long breaks in the middle of a ride. I get stiff and cold from the moisture in my clothes--and I wear proper wicking fabrics, good cycling clothes. Ten minutes or so is OK, but longer than that doesn't work well for me. Stopping for a meal mid-ride really isn't my thing either, as I do better with snacking along the way. Eating a meal makes me too sluggish to ride well.

I think you described it well -- because that is EXACTLY what it feels like: Like my body and muscles have simply not been able to get the fuel (oxygen mostly) they need. And, the short break enables my circulatory system to catch-up....

Also, as I slowly get stronger from both a muscular as well as cardiovascular perspective, I find that I am better able to recover on the downhills and don't need the break as much as I did when I first started riding a year ago. Increasingly the break is just a habit.

Thanks for the insights!

If you don't want to constantly stretch during your long rides, learn to use warm up and cool down periods. Start off with a little slower speed than you would normally and work your way into your normal speed. I do about 1 1/2 miles of warmup at 75-80% of my normal speed (with ample coasting) and then do a cool down period, for about the same distance before the stop, at the same rate of my warmup. I do a lot of long distance riding and have never had any restart fatigue issues using this method. I very rarely do any stretching before, during or after a ride. I'm not sure that this will work for everyone or if it will work for you. I know that it definitely works for me.

I've never been one for a cooldown because I don't believe that it prevents soreness and I don't think there's any benefit to working out the lactic acid. On the other hand I can't keep still after stopping suddenly, and usually it's only for two or three minutes so maybe that's the same thing? Either way, I think the main effect is keeping the changes more gradual in heart rate and blood vessels.

The physiologists who advise the Sky team would disagree with you. They have the guys on bikes immediately after the finish of a stage, for a prescribed period at prescribed intensities. They say there are measurable benefits in speed of recovery and readiness for the following day.

There are physiologists on both sides - I accept that I might be wrong.

On a lot of the charity rides I do, especially the new ones, I also do a lot of walking around at the SAG stops since I don't always know where they are located. Depending on how long I stop, walking is as good as a cool down period, for me. Either way, it's a gradual increase and decrease in the amount of work my legs do.

I believe every hockey team does this as well. They all seem to spend 30-60min spinning on a trainer after the game.

Digestive tract gets a bit more fuel to deal with lunch , so will take some from the other muscles.

If I'm trying to ride at a quick pace and finish within a reasonable time, say a 6-1/2 hour century, I'll make sure my rest stops are short. But if I'm just out to enjoy a day riding a bike, I'll stop for a meal or to look around, start back slowly and get there when I get there.

That makes sense to me! Even if the lactic acid rationale is an "old physician's tale" there's bound to be some good reason for a cool-down.

I run into this problem on our club rides. On my own I don’t stop for much more than a nature break. The club, great fun folks that love to stop and eat. I just accept that I’m going to hurt on the start after the break. The worst is when the lunch stop comes at the base of a steep long climb…..Oh well, 1st world problems. :D

In January of this year my computer died. Until I decide on which machine to replace it with, I'm using machines at our town library. January is the time of year when everyone catches the flu and begins hacking and coughing and I spend some days there in the midst of a cloud of influenza viruses. Not surprisingly, I ended up the same for about 10 days for which I was also off the bike. Just when I began to feel normal, It began to snow on and off so that roads were icy and or a dirty mess. The upshot is that I spent almost 8 weeks off the bike. Yesterday I rode 30 miles with the bike club and fitness very poor. Those 30 miles felt like 60 miles. On the theme of getting started again when off the bike for a bit of time, a 10 minutes rest is much, much better than being off for 10 days. I will now need to spend hard weeks getting back in shape.

Those stops before a long hill. I stop "AFTER" a hill and ride over the top. If it has been a hard climb then I also slow down- get into a low gear and spin till the legs recover. By that time it is normally too late to stop so just carry on. I used to do the Salisbury 100 and it is a fantastic ride except at the 50 mile mark you had an enforced 30 minute timed stop. Lunch was provided and it was a good snack. Problem was that 5 minutes after was Brassknocker hill. It was steep and it was long but I think most of the effort involved was in getting cold legs to work by the time you got to the hill. That hill always seemed steep to me but probably wasn't.

But that is on the road. Offroad and round here there are plenty of tough steep hills. We have a rule in our group and after the long hills the group will reform. That means that the front runners will have a long break before the last rider gets there. When I used to be part of that front group it was hard to restart so I used to keep cycling slowly to the next gate. By which time they would have caught me and I was ready to open the gate for them.

Slowing down when tired works providing it is not for too long and has even worked when I bonked. Realised I had bonked- Downed a bottle of drink- took a couple of energy bars and rode slowly till I recovered. At least I was moving all the tim instead of stopping and never restarting.