spent two days in the Lakes riding last weekend. managed 2 not too technical rides. after which i was completely fubar.
only managed to ride to work 2 days, legs are like lead, no energy.
entered a couple of events in april, of which i have not got a chance in hell of completing, so have contacted the organisers to cancel.
got a event in may, of which i am also toying with the idea of binning off.
no matter what i do, i cant seem to get any fitness. just feel drained and empty legged all the time. when i am riding i cant get much over 12mph.

feel like it may be time to hang up my wheels for good.

Shit no. Haven’t you had an extended period off the bike? It takes time to get the fitness back!!!

Didn’t you have an op recently?

I had an op back in November and I can’t get back up to speed without really feeling it at the moment. I can’t lift anywhere near the same weight – lift Monday and don’t recover until Friday. It used to be Tuesday and Thursday week in week out before the op.

I’m putting it down to complete lack of fitness and try not to be too hard on myself.

Maybe try a more structured plan rather than just going out and trying riding lots?

Or there is always the E word…

If it’s not fun then stop. But keep a bike for the days when it will be fun again. It’s the wrong time of year to make bike decisions.

Didn’t you have an op recently?

had a op in august, was off the bike until mid november.
whishing i had not bothered now. i could ride prior, just couldnt walk too far.

It sounds like you overdid things last weekend, and pushed yourself too hard. But you still enjoy touring with Mrs Ton, so there’s no reason to give up riding.

“When i am riding i cant get much over 12mph”
So what? Who cares? You have more time to enjoy the scenery, and look out for bluebells and baby lambs.

Fitness comes with time in the saddle, and you had a long lay off. I’d concentrate on gentle road rides to build your fitness and stamina. It’s easy to forget just how hard some off-road rides can be; High Intensity Intervals without realising.

Slow and steady catchee fitness. And you had that lovely touring bike too 😀 .

BTW, I’m just back from my early morning road ride, feel drained, legs like lead, was glad to be home. This on a rest week! We all have off periods 😉

feel like it may be time to hang up my wheels for good.

Cool how heavy will he be in a years time sweepstake ! 😉 Old age is a bummer, Had a week in wales back in September we had to bum out on the blue back to CYB cafe 3 days in, totally spent. Thank god for antur stiniog 🙂

Shame to hear that.

I know it’s a big part of your life.

been checked for anything else going on? one previously regular poster here found he had diabetes, which is why he had nothing in the tank. note i am not suggesting you have diabetes and IANAD, but just because one bit of you got fixed, doesn’t mean there is another bit not functioning quite right. if you weren’t the active type you might never have noticed.

whishing i had not bothered now

I can relate to that, man. 🙁

Prioritise proper rest days, sleep and nutrition over the need to ride into work. That’s still four rides last week, and consecutive days in the Lakes will take their toll far more if you’re struggling for fitness.

I’ve had to learn that the old formula of ‘do more – get fitter’ doesn’t apply in quite the same way now I’m in my mid-40s. Now it’s ‘do a bit – recover – do a bit more – get fitter’.

If it’s the S.Lakes 100 you’re thinking of dropping, don’t do it now, give it a month and see how you are. Another advantage of that one is that if you know you’re not going to manage 100, you can cut the corner on that route in a couple of places and still do a challenging 60 or 70 miles over two days.

Maybe time to realise you aren’t quite as fit as you’d like. That doesn’t sound like a reason to give up cycling! But you do sound like you need to take things pretty easily for a while. How about going out on sunny days – that would cut down your miles a bit 🙂

As others say, build back to riding fitness gradually. Take it easy and check there’s no other reason you’re not feeling progress.

Did you commute by bike every day before your weekend away? If so, you need to stop it. You’re over-training. You need a break to let your body recover – we all do.

ton, trying to offer some words of support here.

I am not the oldest person in the world, in my 60’s , and everyone has different physical abilities.

I digress I have struggled more with strength when climbing, hence the foray into ebikes, but have had a really bad experience with the ebike reliability and now don’t own one at all.

I don’t feel the ebike is a viable option at present.
So, I now only have normal bikes that you have to pedal and have some of the burnout feeling you are getting.

Too worn out to ride two days on the trot, and sometimes a little worse for wear on the third day. Can’t seem to increase my fitness no matter how much I ride etc.

My advice is don’t give up.

Ride the bike, take some breaks on the way, get rid of the speedo or Garmin and don’t worry about the distance, time or speed.

Since doing this I have found the motivation and enjoyment , the emphasis on recording each ride to “improve” hasn’t worked for me.
The emphasis has just been on getting out, enjoying the ride, the diverse weather and the feel good factor from just riding the bike.

Give it a go, just chill and enjoy.

Recovery gets slower as you get older, and it’s way to easy to try too hard. Have a short break then scale down, enjoy the scenery and look for gradual improvement.

If I have another off spell, I’ll be looking to hire an E-bike to help the recovery process.

There, I said it.

Energy and fitness come from healthy lifestyle, healthy diet and moderate to increasing exercise.

If you invest in these and put competitive sports either to the back of your mind or off the schedule then you can get on with getting back into feeling more energetic.

I feel the frustration of not cycling at the levels I used to (because of injury/disease/related health probs) . But at the worst times even bimbling is better than nothing. Sadly, ‘even bimbling’ just now put me back months or more (torn hernia/s) so prob looking at surgery. All I can think about is riding and would love to be able to go 6 miles an hr but my planned ‘fit at 50’ has completely evaded me and the new bike lies unused for the second year. I feel your pain. Irony is I injured myself in the gym at 49 trying to get fit for 50! Fail. Too much too soon. Wrong technique.

But…

Long gaps between riding creates a frustration as one’s fitness fails to fulfill one’s riding goals. Gaps increase, so does likelihood of feeling defeated like a sack of lead. This risks becoming an ever-decreasing spiral into inactivity and defeat.

Small steps, but regular steps. Build it up. If you honestly can’t do that, then best ‘bin it’ as you say, take up swimming or something until you know where you’re at with your fitness and goals for other activities? Swimming got me back on a bike a few years back during one of these ‘spirals’.

Before current injury my ‘lead’-feeling was a combination of being overweight and unfit from too-long gaps between rides. That and a shit diet. Don’t know you OP, but maybe worth ruling those possibilities out before ruling out cycling?

Bit early to be a calling it a day. If I remember rightly you’ve had a few years of on/off health and fitness issues and that combined with the recent op will have taken a toll on your fitness. Reading between the lines so forgive me if I’m wrong but you seem to be throwing yourself back into things expecting to be able to do the same as you could a few years back which given everything that’s gone on could be unrealistic.

My advice would be to start from scratch and build up gradually. Ride as a far and as hard as you can without knackering yourself then make whatever that is your start point and put together a very gradual plan to increase either the speed or the distance (not both at the same time) over a period of several months. If you want to ride further than add a tiny bit on each week, I read somewhere that 5% is a good guide so if you can ride 10 miles then we’re only talking about 10.5 the following week. If it’s speed you want then work out what’s holding you back, weight, cardio, strength and work on that.

But make it gradual, lots of small steps are more likely to succeed. Throwing yourself into big events when you’re not ready will just demoralise you and set you up to fail.

And keep in mind that as a cyclist you may think that 10 miles isn’t that far or that 12mph is slow but it’s further and faster than the average man of your age and health history could do.

I also forgot to say, that I only ride off road, and think the terrain just might be battering my body a little too much at the moment.

Even thinking about getting a touring road bike to get some easier miles in.
Less battering, not so technical and less steep inclines.

Can’t seem to find a suitable flat bar (or Jones bar) bike at the moment though.

Don’t give up the bike and don’t worry about a missed event. If you out for 3-4 months recovering from an op it will take that again to back to your past fitness level. Even more so if you were active and unable to keep up cardio / diet during recovery. I can tell you from harsh experience myself. I found trying an ebike and giving myself less pedal assist over a number of rides and trying to do some road cycling along the way a big help. You even pick up some good techniques road cycling that you can bring back to the trail and have a good excuse to laugh at your mates on the way up hill on the ebike. No fan of ebikes myself but as part of rehabilitation they can be awesome and getting out with your mates is just as important as your recorded times / ability to pull crazy steez. Progress however slow is still progress and don’t believe you are too old to recover just because you’re in your 40s/50/s etc. Good wishes for further recovery / hitting the trails.

thing is, after heart surgery, i was back riding and feeling ok within a month. even went touring in the hebrides after 4 weeks.
but i can seem to get no fitness at all now after ankle surgery. just seems odd from a lesser surgery to be struggling so much.
had all the tests for diabetes and weight issues when in hospital, and again when i got a dvt in november, and then again at monthly intervals whilst seeing the blood doctors, until a week or so ago, when i got discharged from all departments.

so no underlying stuff as far as i know.
so i think the idea of starting from scratch might be a good idea. also i might stay away from the mtb for a while.
thanks everyone for the input.

and sorry to dump all my shit on here, but i does help to be honest.
as i get older i find i dont seem to have as many close friends to talk things through, and some on here are now good friends, and i appreciate the input.

one way to think about it is if you met someone of your age and build who’d been through the same health issues as you and they said they wanted to start riding for a bit of fun and exercise, what advice would you give them? It wouldn’t be get yourself to the lakes for two days of intense riding. That would be nuts.

P.S. dump as much shit as you like.

The difference with your ankle surgery is that you were off your feet in the aftermath, and probably far less mobile in the run-up, and that lack of activity will be the reason your base fitness has ebbed away a bit. Not irretrievable though, you just have to be realistic about being on the bike every day, even if your commute is pretty trivial in the scheme of things.

Perhaps add in some short sessions of stretching and core work occasionally to strengthen things up. It could be a lack of core fitness which is putting extra pressure on your leg strength during off-road rides.

Ton, try to focus on the fun not fitness. That will come with time. Any trail centres near you? Maximum fun in a few km?
We don’t mind you venting on here mate. 😀

Ton I wouldn’t give up but I would just take it a lot easier.
Some of the best days on a bike I’ve had involved easy bike rides with a few pub stops. You work all week so just get out & enjoy a bit of pootling about.

Take your time, it took me over a year to fully recover from a simple broken collar bone. Time off the bike, stress, work etc can all make it difficult to get back to where you were. I too was considering hanging up the bike butt a well timed (mostly uplifted!) holiday gave me my mojo back & the fitness has returned with the enjoyment!

Ahem . . . you were struggling with health and fitness three weeks ago, so you went on a hard-riding (and hard-drinking?) lads weekend in the Lakes . . . and now you feel completely knackered?

No, I can’t see any connection 🙄

As above, you are comparing your fitness to the wrong things. You’ve had an extended period off the bike- you have to be very careful how you measure your progress, otherwise everything will be ‘can’t do this’ and ‘can’t do that’- with all that negative thought it’s not surprising you want to jack it all in!!

A good way out of the rut is to set goals- appropriate goals!! Otherwise you will become too disheartened and lose interest. As in, going straight into competition was possibly not appropriate! Sounds like you are feeling the effects of that now. Instead design daily, weekly and monthly goals based on a realistic assessment of where your fitness is at- if you can’t get above 12mph today then you won’t be blasting along at 20mph tomorrow, but a few months down the line you will be.

Be sensible and stop beating yourself up! You wouldn’t talk to your best mate like that, so why are you talking to yourself like that?

Ton, ride in small segments, fitness comes over time and as monkeys feet said ride for fun.. remember that old adage mtbing is not about the miles but the smiles. Easy to get caught up. If you use Strava turn it off for a while.

Focus on the small stuff and set some mini goals.

E bike.

He lives in Yorkshire doesn’t he ?

So Shirley it’s an e-by-ek-bike no ?? 😀

Tony, we’re similar age and have both had setbacks. Need to, as Colin and others have said, take a rest and build up slowly. It will come back….

I’m off bike too at moment having had hernia op on Monday and will have around a month to get fit before a big Cairngorm jaunt with the Prost8 squad end of May.

Realistic targets and take it easy…

Have every confidence you will be back out there by summer

Email in profile if you want a natter.

Cheers

I’ll echo some of the others – unfortunately as you get older fitness disappears more quickly and comes back more slowly. Be patient. Just keep on riding.

Embrace your inner bimbler! Look to the scenery, ride to the pub, its not about how far and how fast you go. Its about how much fun you have!

Come North and go for a ride with me – you will see what slow really is when you see me ride! 😉

This may go against your ethos: but what about setting a goal, implementing a training plan, tapering the beers ? doesn’t have to be for ever – but may give you a boost.

This thread needs a slow peoples’ ride.

“This thread needs a slow peoples’ ride”
Great idea! We know that Ton now has a couple of free weekends in April 😀

Time to just embrace the slowness, try not to beat yourself up about not being as fast/fit as you used to be or as fast as others. As long as your getting out and enjoying riding at your own pace then its a good thing.

How much of this is comparing with others, and how much just comparing to Past Ton? I’m way off my speed right now after a very lazy winter and when i’m riding myself, I feel pretty shit about it- slow, always out of power, and plans for a day ride keep ending with me just burned out after a few hours- because I’m going at past me speed and today me just can’t do it.

But throw in someone else, and as long as it’s not some XC beast, I’m fine. Partly because it benchmarks you- having someone else complaining of feeling tired makes you feel better about feeling tired- and partly because of the extra enforced breaks, faffs, slowing the pace to chat etc… I can still do all that, I just can’t do full power.

So literally just changing from solo to riding with pretty much anyone makes a huge difference.