Another New Clyde

[MikeSLC]

Got my hybrid set up to ride after being neglected for a long time in May, and ended up buying a road bike a couple of months ago because I really took to it, riding 6 times a week roughly. Hi all!

Question for you all, I had a proper fitting and it solved a lot of my issues. One thing I have happen from time to time is as I'm trying to drop weight, I'll experience exhausted legs. Say I ride a hard hour and a half ride, the next day after 35 minutes I just gas out, nothing left, with a relatively light pace. I try to reload after the long rides, down a quick chocolate almond milk when I'm done, but still happens. Just curious if anyone else has this happen and what you do to try to fix it while losing weight?

Oh, I'm down to 238 lbs. now. Just got a heart rate monitor and will be looking to track cadence soon as well. Related to that, I noticed my HR is in the 120's when putting forth pretty hard effort over an hour and spikes at mid 140's when hitting a hill, etc, which seems low. I know this is a unique thing, but I'm consistently 20 bpm lower than a friend I ride with, he's younger so that accounts for some i guess, just seems low in general.

 

[retrogrinch]

Mike - very belated reply but I just joined and am going thru some of the threads…

Tired legs is very common. This is one of the key reasons athletes have turned to performance enhancing drugs (EPO, steroids, etc etc). The drugs aide recovery. Here's a good read by a reporter looking to gain first hand experience:
http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/Drug-Test.html

The new theory of "drug assisted training" is to train like Superman, then while tapering for the race get one's blood clean so that it won't test positive.

A couple comments regarding your heart rate - without knowing your age nor conditioning it's impossible to provide much info. Smaller people "tend to" have higher heart rates - but be careful as that is a very broad generalization. My wife typically runs 10 BPM higher than me across all conditions. My kids, 30 years younger, run much much higher heart rates. I'm in my 50's and my pulse will peak into the low 170's during all out efforts - but I race and do a lot of high intensity training. Remember, all the muscles contribute to pushing the blood, not just the heart. Harder efforts don't just require additional blood for oxygen, but the muscles actually assist the heart in pushing the blood.

Cheers,
Greg