jzr756

Hello All So I believe I've been riding some where close to a year now. When I first started riding I could barely make a round trip up and down the block.. Over this past year I started making progress by leaps and bounds (by my own estimation never the less).( This most likely is a round trip up and down block for most here. LOL The majority riding hills mixed up with flats 7 days a week 13-15 miles daily. One recent 10 mile ride to Mt.Baldy lodge. Felt great afterwards. Within the last couple days my endurance just absolutely plummeted. Looked on line for answers but I'm finding some conflicting/ contradictory info. One article said one should not ride every day could cause irregular heart rhythm's, insomnia and a few other conditions. Some say breathe through your nose only. Some say breath through your nose and mouth for maximum oxygen intake/ CO2 outtake, just confusing. Gets so bad I have to jump in bed to take a nap. I'm fine afterwards.Started taking 1-2 days off just recently for recovery but it's not helping. I'm 67 230 lbs. So I'm lugging around all this weight. I'll try to shortly figure how to post these couple afore mentioned articles . One firstly Does mention all the benefits. Read down a few paragraphs. Gets to be a bit scary. Love, Love, riding don't wanna stop.
, Totally forgot one of my primary reasons for my post was to ask , has anyone else been through this? Either my age or otherwise?https://www.verywellfit.com/can-you-cycle-every-day-7546277 https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/what-to-know-about-exercise-intolerance https://journals.aiac.org.au/index.p...ffect%20sizes. This last article summarizes nose breathing. Im not wanting to focus on breathing alone but the entire loss of endurance concern. I did not post all the online articles found just posted a couple .to conserve time ,space and reading time. . additional articles/ comments can easily be found online.

Iride01 

I have lousy sinuses. I just need air so I'll use whatever lets me breath easily and fast while on the bike.

As for your endurance, maybe you are just in a plateau. You'll have many of them for various things all the rest of your cycling life. Though perhaps if you are riding every day you might need to change and give yourself a few rest days. I tend to not ride on the weekends, and those are my big rest days. And during the week I might ride 2 - 3 times. Sometimes every day.

15 miles isn't a very long ride, but are you hydrating well? If that takes you a hour, you should be consuming 16 - 24 fl. oz. of water or other fluids. If you weigh before and after your ride you shouldn't be very much lighter after the ride if you were hydrating properly. Some say 2% loss of body weight is okay. The more you go beyond that much loss, the more you might feel tired and fatigued that night or for a day or two after.

As well are you replenishing the carbs you burn up while riding? If you ride at a very hard effort, you'll need to replace the carb's during and after the ride. If you ride at a moderate to low effort, then probably not a issue.

PeteHski

If you really have lost your endurance suddenly in the past couple of days then you are likely sick or suffering from fatigue. If a few rest days doesn’t help then I would seek medical advice. But if you have been riding 7 days a week for a year, then a full week off is not a bad idea! Sometimes you just need a break.

base2 

To me, it sounds like a classic case of over training. I didn't see mention of a heart rate monitor. At the very least it is a good tool to see how your body is responding to the current effort. The true measure is your heart's responsiveness to the current load. Very low lag times and immediate recovery are the preferable condition. This may take years to develop. So take your time. Consistency with achievable, moderate effort is slow, but is the better path than burning hard & burning out.

Take rest days. Your rest days need to be genuine rest days. Whoop and similar measure your heart rate variability. Variability will tel you your hearts condition. ie, "soreness" Just like not everyday can be leg day at the gym. Not everyday can be heart day on the bike. For mortals this probably means 2 consecutive days rest period every week. Period.

Get your nutrients. Your body needs potassium to transport sodium out of your body and it is an electrolyte that functions differently in your body than sodium. Potassium is also not as easy to get in the typical American diet as salt. Potassium is predominately found in vegetables. So it's pretty easy to "run out" while processing out all the salt obtained through poor diet, leaving little left for muscles to use and sodium to accumulate to create the typical blood pressure issues Americans are famous for. I find specifically Low Sodium V8 replaces the salt in their conventional formula with Potassium giving you 20% RDA in every serving to be helpful, for me. Also salt substitutes found in the grocery store (potassium) in your home cooking can be another valuable source.

Most importantly, because this is the Internet, go to your doctor. It is possible to hurt yourself enthusiastically doing too much, too hard, too soon. A basic checkup and a consult at the very least can provide piece of mind and provides athe opportunity to discover something more serious, if there were something more serious.

Fitness isn't what you do, it's what you are. Health is a years long process.

TakingMyTime

Get an HRM and if you can afford one get a bicycling computer/head unit (I prefer Garmin). If you can afford it, a power meter is a big plus. I use one and I can't tell you how much it's helped. There are days where I feel like I'm just crushing it and when I get home and look at the metrics I can see that there was nothing special about it. I really believe it is critical to know where you're at and to give yourself a baseline.

Whenever I feel like I've reached a plateau I like to take things slowly. I will never go out and try to set a new record, I will add 5 miles to my previous week's distance, do that ride several times and then increase the mileage again.

But most of all don't ignore your body. If it's telling you it needs some rest... take it.

jonathanf2

I say add some strength training into your routine. Muscle training will help increase bone density and also burn calories even when you're not training. In fact I say strength training is even better for weight loss. Eat healthy with a choice amount of greens, clean proteins and a good amount of complex carbohydrates. In fact I rotate strength and cycle training. This way even though you're resting for cycling, you're able to train your muscle groups. When you go ride your bike, you focus more on cardio and your muscles take a break. I've seen studies that even mild strength exercises can help towards the older years. Plus don't over do it. If your body tells you to take it easy that day, go on a nice walk instead!

Eric F 

Building fitness is not a linear progression. Your body will have peaks and valleys, and sometimes for reasons you can't figure out. Especially as we get older, allowing our body to recover becomes more important, but also takes longer. Recovery might mean being totally off the bike, or it might just mean doing some easier rides for a little while. Also keep in mind that your 10-mile ride to Baldy was probably a bigger workload than your typical 15-20 mile ride. Being that you're still pretty new to riding, your body is still figuring out what the hell you're doing to it.

Carbonfiberboy 

Not overtraining, just overreaching. If you'd been using a heart rate monitor, it would have been more obvious to you, but only if you knew how to interpret the readings. When one overreaches, one's heart rate doesn't come up as quickly or as high as it normally did. Because your body isn't getting the blood, oxygen and nutrients it used to , one can interpret that as less ability, when it's just fatigue. Your HR comes up because your muscles tell it to. Overuse starts to mess with this connection...

You might not even need a week, but without a heart rate monitor it's hard to tell. If you had one, you'd notice when your heart rate once again came up normally as you start up a hill. So go get one. You won't regret it. Meanwhile, take a week off.

wolfchild

Try riding every other day... 1 day on / 1 day off...Increase your distance by a few miles. Your endurance won't improve if you keep riding the same 15 miles all the same. 15 miles isn't enough to build endurance.

Black wallnut 

So called experts theorize on all kinds of stuff that is just untrue. Breathe however you need to to fill your lungs for the demand your body has at the moment.

spclark 

To the OP: do you sleep well? By that I mean do you get ~ 7 hours uninterrupted sleep every night? Go to bed about the same time every night, get up about the same time each morning? Feel rested once you're up?

How tall are you?

@ 67 & 230 lbs if you're not 6'-2" you're carrying ~ 40 lbs too much. That's gonna tire you out even if you're sleeping well.

My take is you should talk to your PCP about what you're experiencing, get their take on maybe getting a 'sleep test'.

We need Oxygen 24/7, even when sleeping. Sleep apnea – a failure of the body to keep up with proper respiration as we age - will affect the entire body but most importantly the cerebral / cardio systems that keep us alive and functioning. Doing 'nose breathing' alone isn't enough to circumvent the potential lack of Oxygen reaching your brain when you're asleep if there's something affecting the quality of sleep you're getting every night.

downtube42

Ride more. Rest more. Think less. Stop reading stuff.

Repeat.

jzr756

Wish to say thank you all so much for your detailed comments and advise, Yeah spclark, I'm 5'4 my BMI is through the roof @ 39 so carrying around alot of excess baggage so to speak . Think I've settled on a chest strap type HR monitor supposed to be more accurate? Incorporating Strength training did cross my mind at some point in time just never acted on it. Think I'll go with the alternating plan advised see how I feel... Seriously appreciate all your comments.

Carbonfiberboy 

That all sounds good. When I was starting out with endurance cycling, once a week I'd ride away from home until I was tired, then ride back. I gradually increased that day's distance. After 2 years of that, I was able to ride a solo century. Of course I was only in my early 50s. Mid-week I'd do shorter rides, much like you're doing now. The key to getting stronger is riding hills, which I know is tough when you're heavy. Just ride shallow hills to start. Lots to learn about endurance cycling that can onlly be learned by doing it.

Alan K

At your BMI, you need an integrated plan that improves your overall condition as you continue to bicycle. This would, ideally, include better diet* management and combining bicycling with some other means to improve your overall strength.
I like swimming, it is perfect to exercise a large number of muscles without trauma to your joints.

* The generally held view that a good and balanced nutritious diet is expensive is rubbish. You can always find ways to eat an excellent diet without wasting a lot of money by putting a little effort.

Alan K

Preferably through the nose. Nature/God didn’t give us this pointy thing on our faces just for looks. There’s a labyrinth of sinus passage that sits behind it to humidify and purify (to some degree) the air before our alveoli come in contact with it in our lungs. 😉

spelger

that is just not realistic when you are riding hard.

Alan K

At my stage, endurance training means to be able to last a whole day without getting completely exhausted. I try to regulate my pace such that I am never going "all out", which would last only 10 min for me, requiring longer than 15 min slow paced recovery and at the end, I don't come out ahead. I do realize that 5-min cycles of all out and slow downs have become all the rage about a decade ago. But I am alright if my heart doesn't go over 140 BPM.

A few years ago, my son's father-in-law suddenly died through excessively taxing his heart. He was fine and then he wasn't - he was less than 60 years old, in good health, no serious comorbidity factors (before Corona virus and the RNA vaccines that apparently mess with heart some times), and gone in less than 10 min!

There's an old saying for my age group - when you have one foot in the grave, its not wise to throw a banana peel under the other to see what happens!

SpedFast

I'm 74. I ride on average 150 miles/week. I hit these plateaus every several months where it becomes hard just to do 20 mile rides and the feeling of fatigue will linger for about a week and then I get my mojo back and I'm off to the races again. Good luck to you,

PeteHski

What does “excessively taxing his heart” mean? Just so I know what to avoid in future.

Carbonfiberboy 

Quite. My technique is to open my mouth, push my tongue forward until it hangs out a bit, then open my throat fully and belly breathe as rapidly as necessary until, going still harder, deep breathing is not longer possible and I start to pant. On the flat I could breathe through my nose I suppose, but I really don't pay any attention to that when going easy. Whatever.

wolfchild

Redlining your heart rate too frequently by doing intervals and very hard efforts too much and too often. That's my definition of excessively taxing your heart...

spclark 

Closing on 75 m'self, a good week's mileage (for this year's shortish season!) for me's maybe 30-35. Understand that, before last May, it'd been ~ 12 years since I last did any riding at all. Where I lived (and rode) was basically flat; a 12% grade maybe 20-30 yards, more common 5% could be quarter-mile-ish.

That fatigue feeling you refer to seems pervasive throughout my daily activities (save my 'paid-for work' time three days a week) the last few years. That's also what motivated me to get back to riding, as much for what health benefits it may bring as for the change of perspectives it demands.

Up here my favorite hill is 255' over .7 mile, just under 7%, why I added a third cog up front and 32t sprog in back. Makes a BIG difference! And I breathe through my mouth pretty much the whole time climbing.

Carbonfiberboy 

Don't know what "your stage" is. My stage is trying to get back into it after a heart attack and other heart issues. My technique is the same as it always was: plan a route with enough distance and climbing so that I'm exhausted at the end and damning myself for putting in those last 2 climbs. It doesn't take a super high HR to achieve that goal, just enough HR, held long enough, to do the job. I'm 6 weeks into my rehab and stronger every week. I went in for the usual heart attack rehab training, but the specialist said I was already beyond what's included in that program.

Yesterday's was only 30 miles and 1800', but that was enough to do the job. I did almost 2 hours of Z3, IOW not much else, short ride like that I'm working toward 60 miles and 3000' of hard. These hard rides are just once a week. That's all it takes. During the week I do mostly Z2, high and low cadence work and strength work in the gym. Strength work really helps endurance. When I was younger, that and those 60 mile rides were all I needed to ride a fast 400k. Lots of hard work builds endurance. The other thing is that "endurance" means enduring. I figured that out on my first 300k. 200k doesn't touch it. Ride long enough, hard enough, on a hilly course (that one had 9,000') and at some point it becomes a head thing.

The heart attack was because I couldn't take a statin. The stuff I take now to lower cholesterol was only invented recently. And all the above said, it's true that too much high end can result in stuff like Afib, but it takes a heckuva lot of it. I was always careful of that, no more than 45' of Z4/week.

Alan K

You are recovering quite well, as already confirmed by your rehabilitation expert, congratulations!

As for my “stage”, I am an average almost 70 year old, no ticker issues. While always physically active, I have to watch for not overdoing it. We have a lot of snow in winter and every year, someone my age drops dead merely shoveling their driveway but probably they had a sedentary life-style… or not!