Legs rarely loose... I GIVE UP!

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Based on my personal experience recently I found out how an extra hour of sleep for me can make a huge difference. I experienced this last Saturday. I usually have ti be out of the road by 5:30 to get in a couple hours max. I could just tell when I woke up Saturday that my body was energized. I decided to sleep till 7:30 as my wife said they would be busy and my body responded well to the added rest.

I notice when I am rushed and can not get a good warm up that my legs can have that "clay" like feeling. I usually shift to lower gears even if I have to sacrafice speed to get my cadence up and hopefullly the feeling goes away and I can shift back up again later.

Lately my problem has been attacking to much in higher gears and while numbers are higher I am burning out more quickly so my 90 minute rides are great but the 2 hour rides are suffering. Funny cause when I know I am going to do a 3 hour ride or longer...I pace myself much better.

-js


I never have a ride where my legs feel loose, anyone else encountered this? Not from overtraining, definately not my problem since I can only ride every other day due to knee pain (tendonitis in the knees?)

My legs turn to masses of clay when I turn up the power on my rides... no definition to the muscle, verrry tight to the point where I sometimes stop to stretch... this effect lasts most of the rest of the day unless I have a massage, self massage lessens it to some degree but its a problem.

I get the feeling that my physiology is not suited cycling...

i have been training for 2 years working up from 1hr rides with 15mins warmup and warm down... really just 30min effort

i ride long steady climbs 1hr+ at 70 percent of max, 4 x 10min 80 percent intervals; regularly, and an occasional sprint workout but many days go like: warm up 30min, increase speed to 60 percent over some moderate rises 30min, legs get heavy and feel like I cant get any power out of them for 30 min then I jam 20min ignoring it heading back in which feels like near all out effort from legs and lungs then 20 min warm down limping home...

advice welcome!

thanks