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For at least the last 12 months (probably longer), riding my bike seems to have been getting harder. I seem to spend a lot of my rides blowing out of my arse and generally feeling like it's bloody hard work. I don't ride loads but I am pretty consistent - 60 or so miles a week give or take, over probably 3 days. Not a lot at all really. I recently started using a heart rate monitor and was not entirely surprised to see a fairly high heart rate as I feel like I'm working hard, but I was surprised to see I'm regularly hitting pretty much my max HR (mid 170s) even commuting to work. I spend the majority of most rides in zones 4 & 5 which seems ridiculous.
I'm 48, male, diet is "ok", I like a drink but not really to excess (IMO at least!), sleep 6-7 hours a night and feel generally OK. I've been riding for 15+ years.
Any thoughts oh wise STW? More sleep?
stop riding to work
stop riding to work
I would hardly ride at all if I did that Andy! I'm only commuting twice a week really at the moment, occasionally 3. It's not loads in the greater scheme of things really (~20 miles a day). Plus, I'd have to pay for petrol then and I'm too tight for that 🙂
time of year im guessing. ive not ridden for weeks and its showing. just feel run down.
you do ride a lot tho. your getting old and you need a rest.
If you spend most of your rides in zone 4 or 5 then by definition you will be blowing out of your arse and feeling like it's hard work. Maybe your expectations of what is an appropriate speed for 'normal' effort are just too high?
I'm 49 and gradually toning down my expectations of what kind of speeds/times are realistic. Not that I was ever that quick to start with.
If you are using Strava, turn it off and ride by a lower perceived exertion. You probably won't even be that much slower.
Take some time off the bike, maybe a couple of weeks over Xmas. Rest up. Or do some walking/hiking blah blah. Either way, get your mind and body out of its routine for a while.
If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll not change anything.
Tiredness can be a multitude of factors , I was the same at the start of the year, for me I had a blood test and it turned out I was vit D deficit even though I work outdoor. Everything else was normal . Started taking vitamin d tablets and I’m now fine.
Are you going faster or trying to go faster than you were 12 months ago?
Have you put on weight, even a little?
6-7 hours sleep sounds reasonable even if more would be better.
If it's any consolation Woody I've been feeling just the same☹️
For me I think it's an age thing, too much beer and being a stone heavier than I should be.
Is 170bpm your theoretical max or actual?
Don't pedal so hard.
Is it a hilly commute? If not, take it steady. If it is, gear down and spin more. If you are always in Zone 4/5, you aren't doing yourself any favours. Earlier bed, less drinking, some food an hur before riding home. On the medical side, Have you recently lost weight? Are you anaemic? Vit D low? etc...
Three commutes of 20 miles/day is not a high load, even at your age - about 4 hours a week of exercise. Well above minimum though so keep it up. The HR monitor has basically revealed that sadly, you aren't as fit as you might have thought. But taking it easier and steadier will help that with recovery.
If you are turning every commute effectively into a TT, then don't, roughly alternate between hard rides and using very easy gears.
Look at how other exercise besides cycling might be affecting your fatigue levels. These days I tend to "frog march" my postie deliveries and I've uploaded them to my Strava account for the last ~12 months... They have a significant affect on how I feel!
It's hard to explain, but it feels like the effort I put in is the effort I have to put in to keep moving. I'm not trying to go faster, if anything I'm going slower. My 9.5 mile ride to work takes anywhere up to 50 minutes - that's not even 12mph!
Weight is pretty steady, could do with shifting a few KG for sure but it hasn't really changed for the last 5 years +.
@Simon - that's just theoretical based on the old 220 minus age thing. I've hit 175 and didn't pass out so there must be a bit more in there 🙂
As others have said you shouldn't be in zone4/5 for your commute, zone 2 would be more suitable. Yes it will feel slow(er) but you won't be hammering yourself all the time. It can take surprisingly little "effort" to jump across a full HR zone. That sort of distance two or three times a week should be fine (provided you take it steady)
Sleep - minimum of 7hrs per night, ideally 8-9hrs.
I'd suggest as above Vitamin D, ride slower (which is hard to do if you're used to flying along), breathe deeper, check wheel bearings for wear (half joking on this one but thought my brake pads were rubbing badly on the bike, turns out wheel bearings on one side were seized).
I do remember a coach recently saying that when you'r exercising hard\training you just have to get used to being tired all the time !
I know you say it's the last 12 months but everyone (well most people) just feel more tired this time of year !
Have you been snogging any randoms lately? Sounds a bit like I felt when I had Glandular Fever (this was a while ago).
Or, it might just be winter, and you're a hibernator.
If it's any consolation, my commute yesterday felt like a bastid, but it was no slower than usual.
@Woody find out what your real max hr is otherwise your zones are meaningless.
@feed - new bike, thought buying a gravel bike would speed me up but it turns out I commute at the same speed on a rigid MTB with 3" knobblies as I do on a road(ish) bike with 40mm slicks. Definitely the engine that's the problem 🙂
Have you been snogging any randoms lately?
Nope. I do have 3 junior school ages kids though and a Mrs who works in a hospital, they bring all sorts of wonderful bugs home 🙂 It's rare for me to actually feel ill though, I get the odd cold but not much in general.
ride at my pace, youll suddenly feel that everything is sooo much easier. 🙂
It’s rare for me to actually feel ill though, I get the odd cold but not much in general.
Same, but it took ages for me to actually feel properly ill with GF, I had a low level malaise for ages before it properly manifested itself.
Sleep - minimum of 7hrs per night, ideally 8-9hrs
I wish! Up for work every morning at 5 and normally in bed by 10.30 - 11.00 so max 6 1/2 hours at most... No wonder I'm constantly knackered!
@jimdubleyou - it really has been a very gradual process over a year or more, GF would be long gone. I haven't had any symptoms of anything beyond finding exercise gradually harder and harder.
I think that it is probably accumulation of day in, day out cycling and fatigue, just a lot bit accumulating every day, not helped by the winter, dark and cold.
Remember even pro cyclist have an off season, where often they won't touch a bike for a month.
I suffered the same, decided i was going to ride the 39-58 mile round trip to work each day. Through the first winter i was OK, then summer came, felt pretty fit, but by the time the next winter came around, i was buggered, struggled to turn the pedals, had no enthusiasm for the bike and i was getting short-tempered and moody.
GP did loads of tests, but never really came up with anything. In the end it was just an accumulation of fatigue.
A good pointer will be Heart Rate Variance, there are apps now that can assist in helping to see that you are too tired and to back off, often a raised base heart rate at rest, but an inability to really raise heart rate to its maximum also.
woody, I ride every day. some days are a death slog, some days I am awesome.
but a fast day for me is 14mph.
the older we get the harder it becomes. just enjoy the pottering, don't sweat the speed.
Trust your body.
Ride at a comfortable pace, if necessary stop or walk a bit until your HR settles.
You wouldn't over-rev or abuse a vintage car and expect it to last, would you?
Same for your body, and unlike the vintage car parts and rebuilds aren't possible.
Woody - also 48. My max heart rate is 192 at the moment.
I can sit in the theoretical zone 5 for an hour, perhaps more, quite happily.
I suggest you check your actual max heart rate.
As for feeling tired all the time, might be worth a trip to the GP though it may be nothing.
Then build fitness long and slow, shorter and faster, cross train and intervals.
And make sure you eat properly (healthy and enough - not too much).
And a week off every so often helps too.
Last bit about sleep - have a read of "Why we Sleep" by Matthew Walker.
There's a high correlation (but not necessarily causation) between sleeping for short durations (< 7hrs) and poor health.
It can feel quite odd slowing down if you're in the habit of hammering it for every ride - and easy to burn out if you do. Also difficult if you have a road route that compels you to go fast in an attempt to 'integrate' with the traffic.
If you can sort out a route that allows you to ride in at a zone 2/3 sort of pace then it can be far less fatiguing. I tend to save the hard efforts for the journey home but will now aim to arrive at work having barely broken a sweat or at least not being dripping wet!
Happened to me too. One week happily sessioning hard on the daily commute doing HIT intervals for the fun of it, next I'm riding with some STWers at Swinley who I can't keep up with and feel absolutely destroyed after 10 mins and can't get back.
Turns out my heart doesn't want to play anymore and is in AF. Would never have known if I hadn't had a very small TIA and asked what it was on here.
I took my pulse at the docs yesterday and on the machine it was 61bpm. That's good eh! Except it's 61 and 140 in the same minute and if I keep pushing it I'll end up with heart failure in my 60s.
I'd get checked out if I was the OP.
I must stress that I'm not doing anything different now to 10 years ago. Same commute, same Monday night MTB rides. I'm just finding myself more knackered for same speed (if not slower) and effort involved seems to have gone up (and up). The fatigue seems muscular, my legs just don't seem to have it in them. I'm not sat at my desk nodding off kind of tired (well, not most days anyway!).
I have time off (Fri/Sat/Sun and one other day normally), also probably have 4 weeks in the year where I don't ride at all. I really don't feel like I'm doing enough to warrant how knackered I feel.
Have you tried going to bed at 9pm?
What are you doing that neccesetates staying up till 10.30-1100pm then going to sleep , watching rubbish on the tele , pissing around on here ?
Try it , screens off at 8pm , nice hot chocolate , read for 30 mins , prep clothes and sarnies for the next day , fire up the electric blanky and lights off at 9pm
Im 50 now and dont feel anything like you do, and often up pre 5am for work , home by 4pm mind so eat tea around 5pm . Then 90 mins of chewing gum for the mind ( telebox ) . I ask myslef , is this enhancing my life ( as I binge watch Love Island back to back ) and if the answer is Nope then turn it off.
@singletrackmind - most nights I don't "stop" till 9pm so going to bed then would mean work, sorts kids out, bed. No me time, woody no happy with that. I'm up at 6, home from work by 6 - 6.15, then whatever kids activity is on that night or homework etc to do. I could probably go to bed for 10.30 earliest. I need to ditch the kids clearly 🙂
Try vitamin supplements. Chances are you're short on something which is making you feel tired and making your body work harder. Iron would be my guess, but at this time of year it could also be B, C, D and Mg What’s your resting rate like?
In the mean time, id suggest slowing down on the commute until your heart rate is in Z2 for most of the ride and let your body get used to that, then gradually increase pace, stretching the Z2.
As above, get checked out. It's probably nothing serious, but at the age of 48 I found out I was born with quite a large hole in my heart which would have led to a drop in capacity over time. They've patched it now, essentially using a high-tech tubeless repair kit.
essentially using a high-tech tubeless repair kit.
Old toothpaste tube? Do you now have a Stan's monster rumbling around your left atrium?
More like a tubeless plug... Nickel-Ti alloy and PET plastic.
Full story here @woody2000
I've a bit of a complication at the moment - 2 weeks after a very successful patch I've got an atrial flutter at the moment, probably due to heart reshaping now it doesn't have a big hole. Reboot (DC cardioversion) booked for 20th Dec.
What happens on the Monday night MTB rides if you try to go at a hard pace? If it's a complete non-starter, or if it's actually OK seems like it would be a useful data point. Dial the commute way back in effort to zone 1 but throw down some digs out on the MTB and see what happens?
Commuting in at threshold ain't right and certainly ain't right if you're not even aiming for that level of effort. Your body may have just gotten stuck into a grey-miles sort of rut and you need to break your riding down and build it up in a different way. You probably want to carry bike fitness into your fifties so you're right to be thinking about how to tackle this.
@Garry_Lager - Mon MTB rides are pretty steady to be honest, so I'm rarely (if ever) trying to go flat out. I do generally feel like I'm working hard though, especially if I've commuted on the same day too. I do know that when I have to go flat out (I do a few enduros a year), I generally hit the rev limiter pretty quickly (though I've always put that down to a lack of that kind of fitness TBH). I'm going to have to start and keep a diary or something, note down how each day feels and wind the commute back as slow as I can.
They’ve patched it now, essentially using a high-tech tubeless repair kit.
@beej - GWS, but thanks for the mental image of some bloke stabbing an anchovy through your rib cage 😉
Incidentally, how do you work out your actual maximum heart rate? - I know that the theoretical max is 220 - age (which doesn't add up to my experience, being 57 and reasonably ok with going over 163)
Incidentally, how do you work out your actual maximum heart rate?
A few options here...
https://www.cycling-inform.com/how-to-test-for-your-cycling-max-heart-rate
The 220 - age is just one of a set of formulae that supposedly predict your max heart rate. Unfortunately they are all just guesswork and might approximate the true figure for many people but equally they'll be completely inaccurate for many more, they are for me.
I'm 60 so 220-age should give an MHR of 160. Somewhat odd then that I can sit at 177bpm for at least two minutes. Based on that I suspect my true MHR is in the 185-190 territory, I've never actually properly tested it. Working out my HR zones on 160 is going to give significantly different values to those based on 185.
I am also increasingly tired all the time at 41.
Last bit about sleep – have a read of “Why we Sleep” by Matthew Walker.
There’s a high correlation (but not necessarily causation) between sleeping for short durations (< 7hrs) and poor health.
It's a great fascinating book but some people genuinely just can't sleep for 8 hours. I lie down for 8-9 hours in the hope of 8 but average about 6. Recently been wide awake after 4 or 5 hours several times a week which suuuuucks.
Using a sleep app I have discovered I have what I guess might be sleep apnea, which probably doesn't help.
I felt exactly the same way after becoming a parent at the ripe old age of 36. Looking back it was to do with sleep disturbance and probably a poor diet (too many microwave meals as my life was turned upside down by the new addition to the family). For the most part it was down to sleep disturbance though.
I do sympathise as it is quite dispiriting if you think that your body should be capable of more than it is when doing the thing you enjoy.
My sleep pattern is much better now and I feel that my energy levels are where they should be (for someone with a desk job)
Drink enough water. What do you define as an ok diet? If u eat alot of carbs that can make u feel sluggish esp if white bread.
U say you have you g kids so maybe you have a viral bug as kids can bring stuff like that back from school etc
But again your 48 but not drastically old but like me it does affect tiredness.
I know you said you dont want to pay for fuel, but i would ditch bike commute for a while. You may even get more sleep if your cimmute is faster by car. You can get up later and be home earlier for your chores.
That way you may be more rested. Cime ogf the beer and try hard to eat fresh veg and no orocessed food.
I second the tv...sometimes its good to unwund. Sometumes its a habit that sucks your will to live.
Vitamin supplements may help too.
Ian
I'm 46 and I have the same knackered feeling from time to time.
As I understand it, when blokes get older you start losing muscle mass and testosterone production slows.
If you go down the gym and do some weights and a load of press ups you'll increase your muscle mass and your testosterone, and feel better. But not the day after the gym, that will hurt for a while. Strength training will help, channel your inner Rock.
This worked for me.
I know you aren't quite there yet but..... I recommend reading "Fast After 50: How to Race Strong for the Rest of Your Life" by Joe Friel. There's a lot in there that will help you understand yourself better. My hunch is you are doing too much and you can't recover properly in between. As we age we need to pay attention to that recovery time.
I’m 60 so 220-age should give an MHR of 160
It's 220 - AGE plus or minus 20. Everyone ignores the prediction interval. You are one of the 19/20 that is well-prdicted.
TBH in all the years that it's been bandied about I've never seen the prediction interval (nor have I for any of the other formulae). plus/minus 20bpm is a chuffin' huge range and makes the formula even more worthless on which to base any HR zones, you might as well pin a tail on a donkey!
Err, last I checked 185 was a little bit more than 160 + 20, that puts me in the 1/20 that isn't well predicted (wildly guessed).
Fill your boots. Here’s one:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3935487/
Standard error of the estimate is 12bpm. Double that is plus or minus 24bpm. The population mean is 220-age. But everyone ignores the prediction interval.
Want more?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Max+Heart+rate+age+prediction+220&sort=date&size=10
There is an apparent linear(ish) decline in max heart rate with age, that may be offset in trained athletes. But whilst the slope may be about 1 bpm/yr, there is variability in both that slope and the intercept (220). A mixed effects model is better, but Fix was in the 70s
The most obvious thing to do (for me anyway) would be to take some time off the bike for a few weeks. Rest up a bit. Then start up again and see how you feel. Christmas seems the ideal time to do that.
Mince pie anyone?
Fair enough but the last paragraph of the conclusion from the first link states:
In conclusion, our results fail to validate the effectiveness of either of the two most widely used age-based HRmax prediction equations in sedentary, healthy adults. These results suggest that it may be very difficult, perhaps even impossible, to predict with a low SEE HRmax from age. They stress the importance of finding and validating other measures to be used in exercise prescriptions for the determination of intensity of exercise, the estimation of fitness levels, and as a criterion for achieving maximal exertion.
Basically the age related formulae are next to useless as the standard error is too great. Want to know your HR zones? Do a valid test and work them out from there.
The OP doesn't actually need to know his exact HR zones he can determine top end HR zone2 by simply being able to hold a conversation, any harder than that and he'll be speaking in short bursts.
A friend and I are both 50, so theoretical max hr of 170. From ramp tests mine is 183 and his 207!
Woody – also 48. My max heart rate is 192 at the moment.
Yep, 49 here are clocked 193 the other day. I generally try to get a high HR on my commute, just to maximise calorie burn...
Some max HR graphs, shows that the crude formulas are only best fit lines to very noisy data. NB The only reason 220-age is still used is because the maths is simple; it 50 years old and no longer recommended.
https://theskepticalcardiologist.com/tag/hr-max/
Cheers all, definitely some food for thought. I've got a decent Xmas break which won't involve much riding so I'll see how I feel in the new year. I pegged it right back yesterday coming home, to the point where I felt I was going backwards at times. That gave me an average HR of 136 and a max of 156, it is a lot less hilly on the way home however (I work at the top of a big hill, so roughly 1000 ft of climbing on the way in, 750 on the way home).
🙂
It's the Christmas malaise, it happens every winter. Come spring and summer you'll be bouncing around like a new born lamb again