Dead Legs
 

Greetings,

1st my average speed over a 20 mile trek with about 1200ft of gain is 18.5mph.

Well, I rode on Wednesday, Thursday and avg's around 17.5mph then I attempted to ride again on Friday Morning and had no legs... Is this normal?

Is this nutrition or did my 2 previous rides doom me for the friday ride?

I guess my question is how do you recover? and how many days can you ride hard without taking a day or 2 off?

Tnx

Fatigue is cumulative across all activities. Having a bad day at work can negatively impact your ride. Your kids or spouse driving you nuts can have an impact. Not getting enough sleep can hurt your ride. Sometimes you just have a bad day. For shorter rides like the ones you mention, I doubt nutrition on or off the bike is a major factor unless you did something totally different like just starting a diet or choosing to eat spicy Indian food for the first time.

Also, you don't actually get stronger and better during your training, it's proper recovery from good training that leads to improvements.

In the case of truly feeling like dead legs, I would either take a day off or do something very easy because the body is saying it needs more recovery. Active recovery could be a leisurely walk, easy swim, or a ride where you keep your heart rate in a low recovery zone (or if you don't have a monitor, ride only as fast as will allow you to sing the entire ride without ever getting out of breath). It's too easy to get in a trap where you want to ride "fast" everyday which in the end can be counterproductive to your fitness.

As stated above, dead legs means spend time resting for recovery. After some weeks and months, your legs respond to the extra work asked of them by first getting stronger and then by better ability to recover.

As a runner dead legs says you must rest until your legs feel like they are so light you want to start jumping. The hard part is listening to the body......................it never lies.

Yes. I'd recommend at least doubling what you eat before, during, and after your rides. Try to work heavy creams and fried meats into your go-tos, they help "burn through" your lactic acid build up and leave you feeling fresh.

I am facing the same thing. Mon-thurs is recovery until spring, fri-sun are riding days, with fri being my freshest fastest day.

One fri I killed my ride, felt great and wasn't sore, just tired. The next day on a group ride, at the very beginning we start with a small climb and I had nothing, no power at all. Had to tell the rest of the group to go on that I was gonna be slow that day.

My fresh day speed is around 16 mph. Dead leg days are 2/3 that speed. They suck!

Currently looking at everything from nutrition before, during and after to figure out if its caloric, glycogen levels or just plain old muscle fatigue. I've only been cycling since last sept and was never athletic before, so a rank old newb.