Yesterday I did something kind of foolish. I wanted to go riding, so I plotted out a nice flat looking 40 mile route and went. The foolish part was that I trusted mapmyride’s elevation profile, haven’t ridden real hills in almost 2 years (was in IN, now in CO) and last sunday’s 20 mile ride put me at 20 miles of total riding for the past 6 months. Oh yea, I also only brought water on this 2.5 hour ride.
So I get home, bonking heavily with my legs feeling like they want to fall off and proceed to eat everything I can get my hands on. My legs feel dead (not stiff) the entire rest of the day (part of which was my wife’s sick sense of humor, making me go up and down the stairs as many times as she could). This morning I wake up to go on my morning run and my legs still feel like crap. They are heavy and dead, but not stiff. I almost decide to just take a rest day, but in the end decide to HTFU and at least put in an easy 2 miles.
As I start off, my legs feel bad, but not as bad as I expected. Within a mile, they had warmed up and that dead feeling was replaced by that warmed up fatigue feeling; the feeling you get on a long run around mile 5 where you can feel the past 5 miles, but your legs are still asking for more. The rest of the run felt amazing…one of the best runs I’ve had in a while. I had no stiffness or soreness, my form was spot on, I dropped my pace by 10 to 15 sec per mile towards the end (same RPE) and finished up the 4 miles feeling like 4 more would be cake. It’s pretty much the exact opposite of what I expected waking up this morning.
Any thoughts why this worked? Why did I run better on trashed legs then I do on fresh legs? Is there some lesson I should take from this to apply to my normal training (like I need to be doing more hard cycling efforts, I could be running harder/longer, etc) ?
I have noticed this as well, ran faster 5k times days after doing leg press. I assumed it was because it forces us not to fire our quad during our run gait. To properly mid/fore foot run the most efficiently you are not suppose to fire your quad but instead pick up your foot and let it drop. Even though you can try to do this, after decades of walking with shoes it is hard to do completely so the dead legs almost forces you to run without firing your quad at all which will then increase your running gait efficiency.
IIRC, it has something to do with fully replenishing your glycogen supplies. You completely emptied your tank and when you ate “everything you got your hands on” you filled your tank back up.
Some say this is why Landis was able to have such a great day following a terrible ride in the TdF a couple of years ago. And, yes, I know others say it was something else…
Not to turn this into a doping thread, but his stage 16/17 bonk and recovery can’t be attributed to testosterone. Taking testosterone isn’t going to take a totally trashed rider and make them Superman the next day. So saying he doped because he bonked on 16 and gained back lost time on 17 is a complete fallacy. You can, of course, cite other reasons, but stage 16/17 wasn’t it.
Although it may not have been clear in my other post, I agree with you. My Landis example is not for doping but to illustrate how bonking then recharging can give you more energy than pre-bonk.
IIRC, it has something to do with fully replenishing your glycogen supplies. You completely emptied your tank and when you ate “everything you got your hands on” you filled your tank back up.
Some say this is why Landis was able to have such a great day following a terrible ride in the TdF a couple of years ago. And, yes, I know others say it was something else…
I thought that might have had something to do with it, but I was under the impression you had to start he process days before. Even though it seemed to work, I’m not sure I want to try it out as a pre-race routine.
I did the same thing this morning, just reversing the sports. I had a trainer ride on the schedule for today that I was a bit nervous about but yesterday morning was also supposed to be my long run. I resolved to just go easy yesterday to save my legs. Of course, one thing after another drew me into running one of my fastest recent paces. I rested a lot after the run though and probably ate too much too. Fast forward to this morning’s bike workout and it seemed, maybe not easy, but at least anticlimactic. The legs are feeling well used now, and I certainly wouldn’t want to try it for racing either.
cycling isn’t all that hard to recover from
so once you get warmed up and the cobwebs out of your legs you’re good to go
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