sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on short

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jimsheedy
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sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on short

Postby jimsheedy » Tue Jan 20, 2015 6:22 am

I seemed to have developed something where My legs feel like rubbish on short fast rides say up to 60 km but on a longer ride they come good after 100 km and I can go all day. I use a warm up creme which doesn't do a lot. I used to use a Rapha embrocation creme which was is great and worked really well but is a tad pricey to buy regularly. This was never a problem in the past. It's got to the point where on some of the short fast hilly group rides I do I'm struggling where as I used to power because it seems like my legs are never warmed up. On Sunday for example I was on my way to doing a sydney wisemans peats ridge loop but when I stopped at Wisemans My legs were so sore and with no one to push me on I decided to turn back. went home via berowa and bobbin and ended up doing 185 instead of the planned 250 or so. Thing is on the way home I was feeling fine and felt I could easily have done the longer ride.

Any one else had a similar issue ?
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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby Farmer Elvis » Tue Jan 20, 2015 10:20 pm

Is your back sore, that can cause leg issues

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby warthog1 » Wed Jan 21, 2015 2:12 am

I have no double blind randomised trials to be referenced as evidence, so I'll probably be shot down, but I have found it takes longer to warm up before I stop feeling like crud as I get older. Outright endurance seems less affected by the aging process in my sample size of one.
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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby toolonglegs » Wed Jan 21, 2015 2:37 am

No I agree with you warthog... I need a good 45 minutes or so to get into the swing of things.
I have stupidly tight hips and down the back of my legs, I basically have sore everything most of the time... luckily no back issues though.

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby jimsheedy » Wed Jan 21, 2015 5:28 am

No back issues

Oh crap I'm not getting older am I ?
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Le Mong
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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby Le Mong » Wed Jan 21, 2015 12:09 pm

toolonglegs wrote:No I agree with you warthog... I need a good 45 minutes or so to get into the swing of things.
I have stupidly tight hips and down the back of my legs, I basically have sore everything most of the time... luckily no back issues though.
+1 I'm only 28 and I find the first 30 mins of most rides suck energy wise. After that I'm fine till my neck plays up (ongoing issue)

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby greyhoundtom » Thu Jan 22, 2015 7:55 am

warthog1 wrote:I have no double blind randomised trials to be referenced as evidence, so I'll probably be shot down, but I have found it takes longer to warm up before I stop feeling like crud as I get older. Outright endurance seems less affected by the aging process in my sample size of one.
Wait until you get to the wrong side of 70, then before you get warmed up enough, or to use TLL's phrasing "get in the swing of things", you have collapsed off your bike due to being totally stuffed.

Unless of course you stay away from hills, or for that matter any decent bumps in the road, and don't exceed 20 km per hour then you can last all day. :oops: :lol:

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby g-boaf » Thu Jan 22, 2015 8:35 pm

jimsheedy wrote:I seemed to have developed something where My legs feel like rubbish on short fast rides say up to 60 km but on a longer ride they come good after 100 km and I can go all day. I use a warm up creme which doesn't do a lot. I used to use a Rapha embrocation creme which was is great and worked really well but is a tad pricey to buy regularly. This was never a problem in the past. It's got to the point where on some of the short fast hilly group rides I do I'm struggling where as I used to power because it seems like my legs are never warmed up. On Sunday for example I was on my way to doing a sydney wisemans peats ridge loop but when I stopped at Wisemans My legs were so sore and with no one to push me on I decided to turn back. went home via berowa and bobbin and ended up doing 185 instead of the planned 250 or so. Thing is on the way home I was feeling fine and felt I could easily have done the longer ride.

Any one else had a similar issue ?

What is your warm up routine?

Perhaps spinning on the flat for a couple of minutes, then ramp up the effort gradually. Then do a couple of sprints. Ease of and then try a flat out 2-3min effort. See if that gets the legs going.

It us what I do on a trainer, but it is not as easy to do outside with traffic, pedestrians, etc. It can take me 20km to get my legs to wake up on a proper bike ride. Frustrating. A few people on here have seen me struggle along for a while and then at some point it's like flicking a switch and off I go.

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby warthog1 » Fri Jan 23, 2015 4:25 pm

greyhoundtom wrote:
warthog1 wrote:I have no double blind randomised trials to be referenced as evidence, so I'll probably be shot down, but I have found it takes longer to warm up before I stop feeling like crud as I get older. Outright endurance seems less affected by the aging process in my sample size of one.
Wait until you get to the wrong side of 70, then before you get warmed up enough, or to use TLL's phrasing "get in the swing of things", you have collapsed off your bike due to being totally stuffed.

Unless of course you stay away from hills, or for that matter any decent bumps in the road, and don't exceed 20 km per hour then you can last all day. :oops: :lol:
I'll have just retired and I'll be happy to be still riding like you GHT :)

edit: got rid of the amateur philosophising :oops:
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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby foo on patrol » Sat Jan 24, 2015 7:32 am

Some people just take a long time to warm up, :( I'm one of these and always have been. :wink:

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby trailgumby » Sat Jan 24, 2015 3:45 pm

I'm the same. My younger mates leave me behind on the hills at the start, but I'm cheerfully putting them in the hurt box in the second half of the ride :lol:

Although, last weekend I made a little discovery. Well, not a discovery, all the sport nutrition reading says to do exactly this, I just decided to pay attention for once and give it a shot.

A little while after breakfast, I had about 500ml of maltodextrin sports drink (Wiggle's new own=branded product, in this case) about 10-20 minutes before jumping on the bike.

I surprised myself. And a few roadies. They don't seem to like it much when mountain bikers keep up with them on the road climbs. :wink:

Hopefully it was'nt a one-off and I'll be able to replicate that tomorrow.

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby foo on patrol » Sat Jan 24, 2015 4:06 pm

Mate, I don't care if you're a MTB rider or a Downhiller, if you can go better than me (not hard at the moment) I don't care and hats off to ya! :wink:

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby trailgumby » Sat Jan 24, 2015 5:42 pm

Thanks foo. I think some guys egos maybe take a bit of a dent.

Me, if they want to spring a jump around the outside I say bring it on. I like having rabbits to chase even if they occasionally (erm, usually! :oops: ) get away. When you get older, motivation to ride with intensity becomes a bit harder to find when by one's self. So opportunities to chase are welcomed.

Some guys take it in good humour ("Hey, we can't let the mountain biker beat us! :wink: ") and it's all a bit of competitive fun. We have a chuckle together when we hit the crest and I thank them for the tow. Others get annoyed and try to drop the dude on the knobbly tyres and it becomes a challenge to hang on. :D

Others, like the guy on the TT bike and worn out KOM Cyclery kit on the harbour bridge last Thursday, less so. This next bit probably belongs more in the Dumb Cyclists thread, but here you go. ;) This guy passed me then backed off. So without thinking about it too much I went around and got onto the back of the group ahead, who were backed up behind a guy on a flat bar and were waiting for a safe gap, as you should. This guy then comes around me, squeezes the roadie girl two bikes ahead of me when a rider comes he other way, then went again and missed taking out both the flat bar guy and the second guy coming the other way by less than 3cm. Struth it was close. :shock: Lots of yelling and abuse ensued. Then, once past the flat bar, he... backs off again! : :roll:

I have to admit the red mist descended at that point and I took off after him (only once there was a safe gap) and I gave him, erm, the full force of my opinion on his sanity. At full volume. With a few choice words thrown in. :oops:

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby trailgumby » Sat Jan 24, 2015 5:45 pm

Back on subject... I'll try the same strategy again tomorrow and let you know how I go.

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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby sobmal » Tue Jan 27, 2015 8:10 am

I quite often smash some of the local roadies on my heavy AM bike up a steep hill near where I live, I sometimes even wish they had build that retirement home a little higher up the hill so we could have a real race some day?

On the topic of tired legs, I have the same issue as in I tend to come good on the longer rides, some rides I'm well over 100K's and even though I generally feel like rubbish, I will hit hills and segments that I have done perhaps a 100 times on shorter rides and actually post a time that's well into the top 10% of my efforts, when by rights it should be in the lower end of the scale.

I think its all just relative, longer rides just turn the threshold up a notch or two and the brain just ends up ignoring a lot of the pain in the legs and its the cardio and available energy that's limiting the results..

Back on the topic of smashing roadies up on your MTB.. is there a term for that?
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Re: sore tired legs - fine on long rides but average on shor

Postby tcdev » Tue Jan 27, 2015 10:25 am

Heartening to hear MTB's smashing roadies... I can only dream of doing that one day! ;)

And to sore legs, albeit on a much shorter scale; I find that I'll regularly hurt for the first 10km, then come good. Last week a mate got a bit enthused after a few days of off-road down hill and on our regular 30-35km ride he took off at a dash - I had a bit of trouble keeping up and only about 10 minutes into the ride really felt it in my hamstrings and groin. So much so, I was wondering whether I'd be able to keep up! But not long after that the soreness dissipated and I didn't give it a 2nd thought. My mate paid the price for his enthusiasm on the way back though... I rode circles at the top of every incline waiting for him to catch up! :wink:

Not sure if you can extrapolate my experience into your longer rides, but it's (the soreness) a common occurrence for me.
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