My normal weekly riding routine involves 1 or 2 mountain bike rides (usually an all dayer on sunday of 4-7 hours, with maybe a 1-2 hour midweek ride), plus between 1 and 3 road rides of between 1 and 4 hours. 2 days a week I end up doing commuting riding of an hour or 2.

I ride pretty hard, given the choice and on a good day consider myself a decent rider.

Then life gets in the way and I miss a week – could be work, could be family, could be non-bikey holidays, and any fitness I had just vanishes. I’ll then spend the next 6 weeks turning myself inside out to try and build up some kind form again, just in time for “life” to happen. Repeat ad infinitum. It’s not just fitness that goes – miss a week’s mtbing and all my skills seem to vanish – that fine edge of timing and strength that turns you from being a bumbling numpty into someone who can make a decent fist of most things up or down.

I’ve just come off 2 weeks of a cold (I don’t usually do “ill”, but this one has absolutely floored me). Back on the bike again and I can’t ever remember being this slow – 2 shortish road rides both averaging mid 15mph. I’m usually 17 or 18mph for anything less than 50miles/1500m climbing, hell I’ve done Peaks centurys at 16+. There’s just absolutely no power in my legs to turn the pedals over at a decent rate! I’m sure it’ll come back with enough effort – just in time for Christmas… Then I’m off skiing for a week.

Is there an answer to this? All I seem to do is smash myself into the ground for a month or 2 and finally feel I’m getting somewhere, then it all vanishes overnight. It’s getting to the point where I can’t be arsed to put myself through that much suffering when I know I’m going to be back to square one again in x weeks time – but I have too much invested in biking (I’ve built the last 20 years of my life around it) to do it anything less than full bore, and when I’m on form its amazing and riding is the best thing ever.

I’m 41, eat pretty well, don’t smoke, barely drink. 65kg +/-.

Do you do many races? if yes then ignore below.
Are you smiling at the end of your rides however fast you’re riding?
Don’t be so hard on yourself. having fun = winning.

that just sounds wrong to me – you don’t lose fitness that fast (a week of inactivity) if you’re anywhere near fit to begin with

2 weeks off with a cold is different as you’re presumably still not 100%

A turbo and half an hour of intervals in the evenings on the weeks when family/work etc mean you can’t ride. Doesn’t help with holidays obvs.

You get unfit 4 times as quickly as you get fit.

Never been a massive problem for me as I don’t care that much.

1st ride back after a cold, if you’re anything like me, will mean you’re not fully recovered yet. I did this after a similar break, couldn’t understand why a climb I normally do in 6 1/2 mins took me 8 and I was blowing at the top, not recovered that’s why.

Have a look at the Michael Hutchinson book, Faster if you’re interested in how your body functions, some really interesting stuff in there about de-training and how your body reacts to lay-offs. As someone says above, you shouldn’t lose appreciable levels of fitness in a week off the bike, though you may feel sluggish first ride back.

It sounds like you’re just riding hard all the time, so one approach might be to try and structure things so that you plan in easy weeks to coincide with the ones where ‘lifer gets in the way’ and make a virtue out of it, use it as recovery time to get stronger. If you’re riding hard all the time, you may not be doing yourself any favours.

Do you do many races?

Next to none

Are you smiling at the end of your rides however fast you’re riding?

I’m generally glad to have been out, even when I feel slow, but seeing the numbers aren’t up to scratch always pisses me off. (I don’t have a computer on my MTBs precisely for this reason). Sure I could leave the roadie garmin at home too, but that in itself is an admission of failure. I do find losing fitness easier to deal with than losing skill. That drives me utterly batpoo. Miss one MTB ride and my ability to corner anywhere near the limits of my theoretical ability evaporates.

Have a look at the Michael Hutchinson book, Faster

I’ve got it on the Kindle

If you’re riding hard all the time, you may not be doing yourself any favours.

I understand the concept of recovery rides intellectually, but I absolutely CANNOT do them in practice. I think there may be some greyhound or whippet in my family history and will chase anything I can; and maybe I do have a small willy, but there’s no way I feel able to go out on a nice bike in decent gear and ride it slowly. It’s bad enough being overtaken by another rider if I’m turning myself inside out at the time (doesn’t happen very often), but at least I’ve been beaten fair and square. To allow every Tom, Dick and Harry to merrily spin by me – just no, it can’t happen. I shouldn’t have left the house if I’m going to be that weak.

(and if you read that last paragraph and think “my god this guy is f***ed up”, you’re probably very correct. 😀 )

Something sounds wrong. If you’re riding hard week after week, you should be faster after one week off not slower.

My normal weekly riding routine involves 1 or 2 mountain bike rides (usually an all dayer on sunday of 4-7 hours, with maybe a 1-2 hour midweek ride), plus between 1 and 3 road rides of between 1 and 4 hours. 2 days a week I end up doing commuting riding of an hour or 2.

Depending on how much you want to solve the problem, it might be worth using somthing like Training Peaks to work out how much stress you are really putting on your body. If I add up the min and max from above that’s between 7-25 hours of riding a week, which is a big difference. Of course you’re going to need to use a HR monitor and a GPS each ride to get a real feel as to how much consistent training stress you’re putting on your body,and that might be too much faff. But as things stand, something doesn’t add up.

Miss one MTB ride and my ability to corner anywhere near the limits of my theoretical ability evaporates.

I’ve no idea what my theoretical limit is, I know I don’t want to be anywhere near it though 🙂

Possibly the bug’s not fully gone. maybe take it easy and go for gentle miles rather than pushing it and risk weakening your immune system.

I’ve had a few sessions off the bike from broken bones – currently just starting back now. I find the first few rides you’re week as a kitten and you’re shocked how much fitness you’ve lost and depressed about how long it’ll take to come back.

But if you keep the miles up and just remember your head’s more ambitious than your legs can deliver you suddenly find that just as you get used to riding slowly the fitness comes back far more quickly than you expected. Bit like riding up a hill which is supersteep at the bottom but the gradient eases off as you go – and overall it takes nothing as long as you expected when you first started.

Maybe you’re too keen to get fast again everytime you lose anything and then go off too hard and limit your body’s recovery?

(and if you read that last paragraph and think “my god this guy is f***ed up”, you’re probably very correct. )

No, but have a quiet word with your ‘ambitious self’ he’s holding you back and it sounds like your overdoing it. When I was getting PBs in running I only did one fast session a week – at track when I would turn myself inside out. Other runs were all slow and steady

I have the same problem but in recent years I’ve found it less bad if I really concentrate on a good diet, get good sleep, allow decent breaks between riding and also fit in short interval sessions.

I’ve also found recently that if I never push myself to 100% when climbing or pedaling, keep it to 90% max, that I seem to actually get fitter. I think that due to the conditioning my body now has from the years of riding, that before when I was pushing myself harder, my body was always in ‘repair mode’ and I was doing lots of damage. Now I don’t need to push myself hard and it’s detrimental if I do.

17-18mph on the road bike is pretty slow to be fair. Maybe you’re not as fit as you think you are.

Another example – this is a bit more quantifiable.

I go indoor climbing once a week. If I’ve been going regularly, I can knock out a 6b+, and maybe take a decent stab at 6c. Miss a week, and although I’ll be able to breeze a 6a+, my forearms will just blow half way up a 6b I’ve done before. It’ll take me another week, maybe 2 to get comfortable on 6b+ again. I’ve been stuck at that kind of level for about 3 years now, and it’s starting to get to me.

I do have one day a week of trying to avoid doing anything as a rest day.

echoing what other people have said above, you need to do more ‘recovery’ rides

if you keep smashing yourself into the ground for a month or 2 and then it all vanishes overnight then you’re keeping doing something wrong, that needs to change if you want that to change

If you’re worried about going out on an expensive bike in expensive gear to ride slowly, you’re not alone.

That’s why a built a recovery ride bike. Shiny, steel and retro, it’s better going slowly so people can admire it more!

Or… turbo, watching something gentle. Countryside.

I used to be like this at work – always giving it 100%, full energy, full of ambition and getting frustrated if I wasn’t excellent every time. And then I broke and got signed off with stress. That taught me a lesson.
Things got a lot better when I took it easier – more of my energy went into getting the work done – I chilled out, became more effective and my earnings got a lot better as a result.

Road, MTB, climbing… I think you’re being too ambitious for yourself and expecting too much. Think about how you’d respond if your boss or clients pushed you so hard all the time – you’d tell them to sod off eventually, and that, I suspect is what you’re body’s saying to your head right now.

I did the same to myself for years – climbing, skydiving, mountaineering, MTB, running and now road. I’ve pared it all right down now to just road + core strength sessions and yoga. At 42 I can still keep up with the 30 year olds in my club – I’m not really much slower but it’s a lot less effort

Pootling is fun anyway. I ride s/s for commuting as it tops out at 20mph. I enjoy the ride much more as a result

Thing is this IS easy to how life used to be.

4 years ago when I live in London, I’d be commuting between 10 and 30 miles a day, 5 days a week, then riding probably both days at the weekend. There would usually be at least one 12 hour day of hard physical labour on site, and dependent on the season 2 or 3 other days where I’d have an early site call for a couple of hours before office work, or an evening one or both. I’d also still be trying to fit a climbing session in.

I ride less now, but it’s in much more pleasant surroundings, and I can do each ride for longer, and from my door!

You’re under-recovering / over-training. Sleep more and eat more, do less, or lower the intensity. Time off should be helping you adapt and improve, not get worse.

If this isn’t just psychological (have you ever tried measuring numbers?) then it sounds to me like you don’t have a proper base.

A pattern of inactivity/SMASHFEST/inactivity/SMASHFEST etc isn’t going to give you it either.

Concentrating on the lower tempo consistent stuff is really the only way to do this. Much of this can be boring.

I think I’m a bit like you (we’re also the same age, life sounds similar, I weigh more though 😕 ) in that I like to push it when I’m riding for pleasure too – I think I can get away with that because I’m doing the dull tempo, consistent base miles on the way to work and back, a 20 mile round trip I do every day I’m in the office. I don’t utterly smash it, I focus on riding fast but STEADILY and use it as my base, all year round.

Whatever time in between the rest of life, when I’m not riding to work, that’s when I try and work on the ‘top end’, whether its the race-pace road chaingang, a track session, a solo MTB night ride, a CX practice session or whatever.

I figure how much of this I manage to do is the main factor in how well I do in races. The base I don’t even think about. Without the commute, it’d be a different story.

I’ll then spend the next 6 weeks turning myself inside out to try and build up some kind form again,

but you don’t build form in 6 weeks so you are constantly peak and crashing

life gets in the way

this is you mentally stopping to reset and then starting from zero all over again.

Go on club rides or with other riders who ride tempo with you

See your climbing analogy – perhaps you’re trying harder during the times you fail and that’s what’s causing your arms to blow. Also, in my experience, the main differences between climbing 6b+ and more difficult routes are technique and strategy. Maybe you’re trying to do moves statically that need a more fluid and dynamic approach.

Consistency is what is obviously missing. You need to minimise the gaps in your riding.
Stop hammering yourself all the time, if you are not fit enough to absorb it then it breaks you down. In fact I would just leave out any top end stuff for a few weeks.

Try riding at endurance pace, NOT bimbling, but a pace you could sustain for a few hours if you had to. Talk to yourself out loud. If you are fighting to breathe back off a touch. Do some 1.5 hr rides and maybe a 3-4 hr ride within a week and 2 rest days. Increase the hours slowly for 2 or 3 weeks and then have a few days reduced workload. If you are away do what you can, gym running walking xc skiing?. Busy at work? there is usually an hour for the turbo somewhere in the day, maybe in the carpark at lunch time?- Anyway the idea of this is it should feel pretty easy for the first few weeks. I would want to keep it like this for a while because it sounds like something is pretty messed up.

At some point you will want to put some intensity back into the mix. But do it slowly, just one or two days a week. Start with small doses. Not too hard and not too long. You do not want to feel twatted after every session. I only do 1 hour of intensity a week split over two sessions and I do ok (for a previously non sporty type).

I cant help you with the skills stuff. Just feel good that no matter how bad you get you will never be as uncoordinated or crap on a mtb as me 🙂

I understand the concept of recovery rides intellectually, but I absolutely CANNOT do them in practice.

At 41 you really need to, or just be happy with where you are. You can’t go at 85% or more all the time and be at your best. None of us recover as fast at 40 as we did at 30.
Maybe what you have is an ability that’s maintained by regular use but is lower than either your potential or riding volume and intensity would suggest and leaves you close to over-trained. Your feeling of lost fitness in a week may be the body recovering and then being snapped out of recovery mode, you may be better off taking a few weeks of slower, steadier riding then adding a short harder ride a week after a few weeks. Accepting a slow period and building up longer term.
fwiw I was doing what you’re describing in my mid 30s and I was never better than average to almost-quick, certainly no road-racer. I got significantly quicker with much improved endurance after slowing down for ~75% of my riding and understanding the need for recovery and balance, how to fit in riding I wanted to do with that, etc.

To allow every Tom, Dick and Harry to merrily spin by me – just no, it can’t happen.

It’s good to be able to let them. It’s like the relaxed roadies that you can ride past in the winter, they’re just riding long and easy. They’ll be flying in spring/summer and they know it so they don’t care. All the debate over base-miles aside you need cyclical loading and recovery of some sort to improve your form rather than maxing-out every time.

The only number I generally worry about is average speed. Above 17mph is acceptable, above 18 is OK, above 19 is almost unheard of. Below 17 is “go back and do it again properly, this time” unless its been especially long or steep.

When I say “smashing myself into the ground” I don’t mean I’m sprinting flat out everywhere in a panting sweaty mess – to be honest I have no sprint whatsoever. What I can do is just sit there and pedal up hill, down dale at a reasonable rate. When I’m fit the average pace gets faster, when I’m not it gets slower and I struggle to hold a gear or a decent cadence. Heart rate doesn’t go up noticeably – I just can’t make my legs work harder. Doesn’t hurt or anything, they just don’t go round.

I do wonder if its the opposite problem – I’m never actually REALLY exerting myself – I don’t do sprints or intervals or anything like that – I just sit there and plod away. The only time I max my heart rate is climbing properly steep hills out the saddle, and that’s generally at a steady cadence.

I’m not aiming for a peak – I just want to be in decent consistent shape and know that whatever happens, wherever I’m choosing to ride, for however long, that I’m not held back by “me” mentally or physically.

I do wonder if its the opposite problem – I’m never actually REALLY exerting myself

Maybe, everything suggests you need a lot of slower to average pace riding plus a little really maxed-out riding to get fit, but how much, proportions etc I don’t know, I expect it depends on the individual, what your aims are etc. I don’t think you can be in top or even generally good form all the time though, you can only be consistent if you’re happy with mediocre fitness.

Do you finish hilly rides at a similar pace to starting? I ride in the Chilterns and was told that doing a too-large remainder of hilly rides in bits wasn’t good, causes more damage or need for more recovery. Some of that is ok but ideally stopping at or only just past the point of done-in, not done-in with 20+ hilly miles to go.

Well I think your problem is that you are riding to much each week and you are not resting enough.I use to race XC MTB and X=cross racing for 15 odd years and you need to rest.You sound like a mile muncher where you ride a lot but don’t gain that much fitness, a week of should do you a world of good.
As said above 17/18mph ave is not fast by any means.There are plenty of people 50+ can ave better than that.
Maybe you just sit back and rethink your riding and try riding just a couple of times a week.

It doesn’t add up in my mind – if you have a good endurance base from years of riding it shouldn’t disappear in a few weeks. It’s winter, the weather is likely to be cr@p at times – simply get out and enjoy yourself on your bike, forget strava and your computer for a couple of months. Try riding somewhere different – you’ll see a lot more with our head up, not down staring at your front wheel.

I have just had the best part of two years off
I now weigh 95kg so hills, longer ones esp are hard
I,m sitting here drinking a glass of red cause I’m too nackered to do any exercise after work.
I still easily average more than 18 mph – which in itself is shit – imo
I’m older than you as well

You should be miles better than the figures you give
Overtraining or over reaching might be one explaintion
The acute downturns in form sound a bit psychological – as it really does not correlate with what one would expect physiologically
As others have said the rest should make you better
Perhaps it’s time to bin the computer for a bit?

I do wonder if its the opposite problem – I’m never actually REALLY exerting myself – I don’t do sprints or intervals or anything like that – I just sit there and plod away. The only time I max my heart rate is climbing properly steep hills out the saddle, and that’s generally at a steady cadence.

Selectively quoting but I’d say this might also be a bit of the issue. Sweamrs is just starting a training program and she went out with her coach for ride at the weekend. At the end he asked her how it was and she said that was her “usual pace” which is one she can keep for ages. To which he replied – “well from now on you’ll either be going faster than that for short periods or slower than that for long periods but you won’t be riding at that pace much”.

So I’d echo much of the above – it sounds like you need more rest but also perhaps really do intervals as well. The day after I’ve done a full set of intervals my body takes every opportunity to tell me I need to take it easy and (most of the time) I listen to it.

Use your heart rate monitor and stick in zones 1-2 all the time for most of your rides. Then, probably only 1-2 hours of your training week should be harder, shorter intervals. You will notice improvement if you do this, but you need to have a proper day of rest of very reduced activity the day after a hard interval session.

I’m nearly 48 now and I’m probably fitter now than when I left the forces 11 years, since I took up mountain biking years ago its given me the drive to stay and keep fit and I’m running again now which I hated doing as it was one of the mundane things you had to do.

I packed in smoking 2 years ago and I was on about a 100 a day !!! seriously … but changing my lifestyle I enjoy getting fit now.

But when I do get an injury now the recovery period is long but age is a bitch 😐

It’s bad enough being overtaken by another rider if I’m turning myself inside out at the time (doesn’t happen very often), but at least I’ve been beaten fair and square. To allow every Tom, Dick and Harry to merrily spin by me – just no, it can’t happen. I shouldn’t have left the house if I’m going to be that weak.

Regardless of all the physiological stuff, I’d be maybe asking some questions of yourself, like what you’re trying to prove and to whom?

I doubt anyone else on the road cares whether’s you’re faster or slower than them and people who know you probably appreciate that you’re a fit, quick rider without you hammering past them every time you go riding.

Being competitive is fine if you’re just playing or racing, but if it’s actually spoiling your enjoyment of riding, then what’s the point? Particularly if it’s also slowing you down at the same time.

I think there may be some greyhound or whippet in my family history and will chase anything I can;

This might mean that you have next to no base fitness.

If you haven’t done much base training, you need to start (if you care about fitness of course), and you need the discipline to do it.

Base pace feels easy at the beginning of a 5 hour ride, not at the end.

My normal weekly riding routine involves 1 or 2 mountain bike rides (usually an all dayer on sunday of 4-7 hours, with maybe a 1-2 hour midweek ride), plus between 1 and 3 road rides of between 1 and 4 hours. 2 days a week I end up doing commuting riding of an hour or 2.
…
Then life gets in the way and I miss a week – could be work, could be family

How the hell do you fit in a family at all with all that going on? Plus climbing as well?