Went out for an hour and half road ride (25 miles/1800ft) on Tuesday lunchtime and then last night on the mtb for 2.5 hours (20 miles/3500ft). Between the two I did barely left the house and spent 8 hours a day sat at my desk.

My legs were really sluggish for the first 40 minutes or so last night and although I got up to speed they were quite achey for the whole ride.

Anything I can do to help avoid this or is a longer recovery period just one of those things that happens when you get near 50?

Anything I can do to help avoid this or is a longer recovery period just one of those things that happens when you get near 50?

Have a protein shake after a ride
Ride more so your legs get used to back to back rides

I commute 20 miles each way 3 days a week, 5 days this week, and the above works for me. I’m 46.

I did wonder if doing more exercise would help.

Other than riding and diy/gardening I’m fairly sedentary.

One of the real gains in more regular ‘training’ / riding is better adaptation and faster (edit, faster or just ‘more able to’, not sure) recovery, as much as any gains in actual performance. 2hrs may not be a lot of saddle time but if you’re pushing past 75% of your max for a good chunk of that time (the av speed says you’re probably putting a reasonable effort in there?) and you generally don’t ride (inc recovery/slower rides) 4, maybe 5x a week you’re still in normal recovery mode after that ~2hr ride – maybe 48hrs before feeling fresh again?
Rest, post-ride nutrition etc all help but adaptation to riding more often or longer periods seems to make the biggest difference.

thanks James – yes, I tend to go out and push myself when I do ride – the road ride was nearly 70% in what Strava calls ‘Threshold’, the mtb ride less so (about 40%) because there was a lot of singletrack.

Riding more often and/or for longer is probably what’s needed.

I tend to start getting problems with fatigue and cramping (despite lots of electrolytes) on the odd occasions I do go over 4 hours on a single ride.

Looking at doing the big Dog again this year, maybe what I need is a plan rather than my usual ‘up the ride time a bit in the month before it’ approach.

So riding more, mixing up the intensities and post ride nutrition should help you.

I always try for an easy ride in and go harder home, mainly because I pretty much always have a headwind home so riding easy isn’t an option. If I do a 5 day week of commuting on the bike I usually find my legs are pretty tired by Thursday but I usually feel fine on the Friday – that Friday feeling I guess.