Tired legs and tiredness - why some weeks are worse?

[TPMB12]

I'm curious to pick the collective wisdom of the forum members. I cycle 3 or 4 days a week on a 14 mile round trip commute.  Like it a lot and take the exact same route every journey. I have good days and bad days but generally we are talking travel times consistently 25 to 29 minutes unless into a serious headwind like in autumn and winter. In those cases I can take a hard 45 minutes if the wind is strong enough.

Most weeks I get a bad day on Wednesday and if I've been very active at work I have an easy ride home taking 29 minutes but feel ok afterwards.

Last night after 2 commuting days following a busy weekend, but not in an active way, I got home with dead legs. They positively ached such that even a hot shower and using deep heat and freeze alternatively didn't help. Today I struggled into work in 29 minutes. I'm always best in the morning at 26 minutes but not today.

I'm fit and healthy but did have a throat infection weekend before last. What could cause what feels like excessive aching/tiredness in the legs when you've not done the work to cause it?

Sleep isn't great but it's my usual pattern and certainly isn't any different to when I've been feeling good for a few weeks.

What can I do to recover? At least after today I'm commuting by car so that'll help.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Is your job sedentary?

I suspect that the cause is simply 'seizing up' due to not flexing and moving around enough on the days when you aren't riding.

If you were doing heavier exercise or more riding I would say it was what we used to call (when I worked as a labourer) 'the sads'. The days when you just couldn't move. Whole body exhausted and limp.

[Canardly]

Biorythm?

http://www.biorhythm-calculator.net/

[TPMB12]

I'm a desk jockey who does a lot of walking round a factory site. Some days I'm more riding a desk other days 50:50 or even rarely deskbound at all.

Yesterday was average as was the week, week before too. I'm rarely sedentary for long. So shouldn't just seize up but seize up with ache is how is describe it. Stairs kill me.

When I was younger I'd ride for a few hours, back home for lunch and off again in the school holidays. Back home in the afternoon I'd feel like my legs would give way coming.downstairs for an hour or so then I'm almost back to normal. Now I'm not the same but I do recover quickly. Not this week.

Biorhythms sound feasible but I've got a good feel of my rhythm normally and this week it's not the same. Now I used to do long challenge walks and even a nice day out walking often took me 16 to 26 miles without any tiredness or ache in.the legs. Riding 7 miles home took over 30 minutes (5 minutes + longer than last week) as i took it very easy. Still tired and aching legs.

I'll probably.never work it out but rhythm or nutrition is my best guess. The nutrition could be more likely to explain tiredness because I've been hungry a lot despite eating the same sort of foods and quantities as normal.

I must charge my Fitbit surge up and use it to see if there's something happening like my sleep is being disturbed or my rhr is high. When I use to wear it my rhr was a good tracker of my fitness/health when it rose a cold would come and I'd slow down.

[mrcharly-YHT]

So you aren't totally sedentary, it's only your legs that are completely dead in feeling and actually they ache a lot rather than just feeling dead. You aren't riding enough miles to be wearing out your legs - unless it involves a lot of sprinting between traffic lights.
Do they always ache/hurt on a day after you've been cycling?

I am not a medic but I'm wondering if you are getting circulation problems in your legs.

[TPMB12]

They're dead or nearly dead. Stairs are a slow affair unlike my normal run up them 2 or 3 steps at a time. It's aching and tiredness in the legs.

My dad had a clot in.his legs which ended up with a by-pass there. He was mid 60s I guess. Doubt I'd have that myself. Guess I'll get the week out and see how next week feels.

[hellymedic]

<Anecdata>
My Friday morning commutes went like a rocket after Tea and Cakes with Grandma on Thursday afternoon.

The Grandma is no more but you could try the occasional midweek cakefest.

There are more painful things.

[TheLurker]

When I was younger ...

I think you may, indirectly, have answered your own question 

[TPMB12]

Age has undoubtedly had an effect but TBH I have these good and bad spells. I think I'm just in a bad one. I can have weeks of good rides at what is a decent speed for me. I might have 1 day.midweek that I'm struggling on but that's all.  Then it's followed by several weeks of struggle. Same commute but with up to 16% variation in time between good and bad weeks.

This makes me think it's not age related, or mostly something else at least.

[hellymedic]

?? Glycogen store variation?

[TPMB12]

Diet then? Thought it could be so I'm taking extra food to eat through the afternoon. I took a banana into work and ate it 15 minutes before leaving work for home. I had.a good ride. Did the same next day with a small choc chip muffin and also had a good ride. Day after that I ate the banana 5 minutes before leaving, I struggled. My thinking is I need to get food into my body with sufficient time to digest. I'm now eating a little and often through the afternoon.

The other thing could be sleep.

I'll try to improve both diet,  time that I eat before the ride and improve my sleep patterns.

[hellymedic]

As I posted upthread, my Thursday teatime cakefest gave me Friday rocket legs...

[Ningishzidda]

People can carry an illness which effects their physical performance without realising they are.

My Doc told me there are as many strains of chest infection as days in the year. Some have little or no effect. some have a bad effect and some just 'put you back a bit'.

[TPMB12]

Don't know what happened this morning but I was doing rather well on the wet ride in. Not my phone fastest but a good 2 or 3 minutes faster on a 26 to 30 minute commute. Dropped from 31 to 28 minutes. Felt really good if a bit aching in the legs. I even caught up to this guy who on a good day we're level. I beat him on the first bit over the high bit (if I can overtake with the traffic) but he passes me after the high.point. It's like he goes up a gear over the hump.

[Ningishzidda]

The questions for you that leap into my head are,
1/ Are you a spinner? Are you revving your cranks at the top end of your rev range?
2/ Have you ever trained at low revs where to accelerate, you simply stand up on the pedals?
3/ Do you ever take upper body weight off the saddle and put it onto the pedals? ie Do you ever ‘honk’?
4/ Do you ever get the Leg Flexor to do some of the work?

[TPMB12]

I would say I'm usually 70 to 80rpm based on the month my.cadence sensor worked. Before I got the sensor I tended to be a bit lower, mashing away in a high gear.

I used.to have very strong legs, a mix of lots of hillwalking and gym activity. This meant I tended to feel higher gears than generally considered better were best for me. I could run a high gear up moderate hills often only dropping to smaller chainring on steep hills. Even now I got by with using only the big chainring (52T) with 25T at the rear on the hills around Skye and Mull with a fully laden bike plus trailer. I generally don't need to rise out of the saddle with high.gears even on hills,

When I'm having a bad spell I sometimes have to drop my gears and rise out of the saddle on the mid commute climb on the way home this is only just over 100m high from the single figure height at the start of the ride 3.5 miles ago. That's when I know I'm not at my best by some ways.

BTW on the matter of gears I tend to only use my 52T chainring with 12-25T on the back. Use all of the cassette on my.commute. If into a very strong headwind I drop to the 34 T chainring. I'm not running low cadence at that neither.

Perhaps I need to re-think my gears, could be I'm running s bit high at times and would benefit from having my cassettes with a slightly lower gearing say wiT or if the short cage rear derailleur could use more say 30ish teeth. What do you think?

Just clutching at straws, but I've possibly got time to work it out because my ride in was ok so I might have.gotten over this.current bad spell.