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back on the iron horse - think I overdid it

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back on the iron horse - think I overdid it

Old 09-18-21, 04:08 AM
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Dahoon
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back on the iron horse - think I overdid it

Hello fellow heavyweight cyclists

First off let me get weight out of the way as this is my first post in this part of the forum: Down from close to 130kg to ... well last week it was 115kg so less than that but more significantly I'm tapered off many many years of antidepressants which startet after a bout with cancer and Watt on a bike have almost doubled since I started. Old pants hidden away in the back of the stack are becoming my new pants!

Anyways, I bought myself a bike some time ago after only riding the couch for 15+ years (literally doing little else) and turns out that my form was so bad when I went for a test ride that I could hardly ride it on level ground. So I started taking spinning classes and I totally fell in love with it... and now I think all the spinning and cycling has become too much for my poor legs but I have no idea what is going on with them.

On the one hand it doesn't hurt or feel uncomfortable at all when I ride and I can see from one ride or spinning class to the next that my form is improving (pretty fast actually!). But on the other hand my quadriceps feel like, well it's not easy to explain actually (English not being my primary language doesn't help). If I tighten my quads for a few seconds, like when stretching in the morning when getting out of bed, they buuuurn for some 5 seconds or so. It almost feels like cramps but without the muscles actually cramping up or like when lifting weights when doing that one last lift before you can't take another. Burn when tightened but otherwise no soreness and no pain..

I have in the far away past overtrained and that lead to a significant fall in form, lack of energy, etc., which is why I'm confused since I see nothing like that now. I can easily take a spinning class without problems. I have rested and not touched a bike in 4 days now but as far as I can tell it haven't made any difference whatsoever.

Anyone ever experienced something like this? Of course if it persists I'll go see my doctor after the weekend but I was hoping someone in here had some advice.. I really hope I don't have to stop riding for much longer now that I finally got up from the couch!
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Old 09-18-21, 04:02 PM
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I would be taking a good look at your nutrition, and particularly your protein intake. A few years after I got into riding and subsequently lower level racing, I developed a real passion and got heavily into training. My program was sensible with hard and easy days and a total day off the bike, but my legs were constantly sore. Not bad sore, but very much like you describe. I started delving into the nutrition side of things and my first trial was protein increase via a whey protein isolate straight after a ride. My soreness disappeared totally aside from some soreness after hard rides. So the moral there is my protein was down.

Now that was many years ago now and I’ve tried a lot of things since then. I now don’t get to ride nearly as much as I should, but just a couple of years ago I was heavily immersed into the track sprinting side of things. Hard intense workouts coupled with minimal road rides but they were still there. I was no longer taking any supplements as I had my diet sorted and I seemed to be doing really well. So in saying that, get your diet sorted and make sure you’re getting enough of the things that your body needs to do the things that you want to do. WPI helped me through that discovery period and I did end up taking it for many years after. Get a small batch and give it a try and see what happens, or try some of the protein drinks that are around nowadays. Just check you’re getting at least 20g or protein in a serve. It’s easy and relatively cheap to try. From there I hope that you get some relief, if not it may be worth doing some further medical investigation
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Old 09-19-21, 02:47 AM
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Thank you for the reply.

I'm already drinking whey protein pretty much every day. I'm more worried that I get too much than too little (I love the biolab strawberry milkshake)

I'm maybe not eating enough though as I'm on a diet and loosing weight at an ok fast rate.

I did something counterintuitive yesterday. When thinking I might have hurt my muscles rest sounds like the way to go but since it didn't help I did some stretching exercises (which everyone these days says makes no difference even after a workout, even the scientists). Well, I must say that it feels like that did the trick. I have no idea what is going on here that stretching should help on burning muscles (again, they are not sore, they burn like from latic acid) but it gave instant relief and today they feel a lot better where before it felt like they got worse by the day. My only theory is that waste builtup in the muscles caused it and hence stretching helps? Very odd indeed. I did write to my doctor and he had no idea either without running some tests if rest didn't help. Anyways it seems I'm getting better and I'll try a bike again tomorrow if all goes well. Fingers crossed!
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Old 09-19-21, 02:43 PM
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What kind of diet are you doing? I did a low carb not keto diet for a while and while it worked a treat, it lead to low mineral levels, particularly magnesium.

But it does sound like you have a lactate buildup issue. True, stretching is proven not to help for torn muscle fibres from muscle building, but it definitely helps for lactate buildup. Also try other things like the last 5-10min of a ride just roll the legs over really easily as a cool down. Give them a little massage to flush after a ride. Just moving the muscle helps.

Also with your WPI if you’re mainly riding, just take it immediately after exercise. You shouldn’t really need it outside of that. If you do and it appears to be helping, then you probably need to look at what you’re getting in from your diet.
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Old 09-19-21, 04:37 PM
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I'm on a keto diet. I've tried keto before with great success but I overdid it as I often do and ended up with no glycogen stores and couldn't even ride a bike for 2 minutes. I didn't know it was the cause so I ended up giving up and hence now I'm even worse off, starting over. I have learned my lesson and eat lazy keto now so it won't happen again, testing my blood sugar, ketone levels and getting blood tests at my GP.

I have never heard of having a lacte buildup in muscles before, outside of while actually training. I can't find anything on Google about it either except in diseases I know I don't have since I just had a check-up.

I'm going to do a test ride tomorrow and if an hours ride with a slow roll at the end and then stretching warm muscles doesn't help I'll go to the doctor again.

Very annoying when you after a lot of lazy years finally got a lot of energy and are seeing good progress. I'm too embarrassed to mention any watt or FTP numbers but my average watt for an hour is up by 60% since I started out. I really don't want to stop now

Last edited by Dahoon; 09-19-21 at 04:42 PM.
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Old 09-20-21, 02:53 PM
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Sounds like something is up. Even with your keto, unless you were fast paced racing you should be fine with a cruise ride. I was still doing our club social Sat morning rides. ~30mile out and back rides for 1.5-2hrs. Cruisy out at 15-20mph but full gas handicap race paceline style return. I could do the return leg but die in the last few miles, but if I took a gel at the turnaround I was good for the whole ride.

But a disclaimer, I was overweight when I went low carb, but I was still very fit and fast. Club B on road and A on track. Low carb took me from 125kg down to 110kg in just 10 weeks
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Old 09-21-21, 06:42 AM
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Patience. I'm not a doctor but 15 years of no excersize may just be the cause.
I see so many people try too hard in the beginning and injure themselves or decide they just can't do it.
Its like the couch to 5k in 5 weeks which might be ok for someone in their twenties but won't work for everyone.
And 4 days is not long in comparison to 15 years. If it took 15 years to get this unfit it will take time to get fit again. The body has to loosen up first. Your body needs time to learn and adjust. And it's not just your legs but your back and arms and neck that need to adjust.
Make sure the bike fits and use the correct gear ratio. You should just be turning the pedals almost effortlessly not pushing on them or hopping up and down on the saddle.
Find a flat road with no wind and go up and down it in different gears till you find one that is comfortable and use that as your baseline.
And lastly be gentle on your self. Don't over complicate it. Lots of short gentle rides.
And good luck.
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Old 09-21-21, 08:30 AM
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I did a low-effort ride (spinning bike, 100 watt avg. 45mins.) with a few unweighted squats after and then some stretching .... and it seem to have pretty much fixed it. Now my legs are just very tired but that's not really much of a surprise since I have likely been training too hard in the months since i started and have had the burning quads for a week now (that alone can't be healthy!). I still wish I had some medical explanation not pulled out of thin air though or at least some forum post from someone else who had the same happen. Oh well, I'll take it slow for some weeks and then only slowly ramp up after that.


Warning! Totally pulled-out-of-thin-air-googleitis-theory:

Having just read about 1) mitochondrial cells and how lactic acid threshold can be extremely low in some sedentary people and 2) excessive exercise causing mitochondrial functional impairment and 3) that some medicine can damage the mitochondrial cells (me having a history of both cancer treatment and many years of antidepressant medicine) this is the theory I'll stick to unless I hear otherwise from some smart people.


Morale of the story: Don't overdo it and stretch those muscles after a workout.
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