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just got in from a very long and exhausting day out in the hills. weather was awful in the valley; grey soupy fog, 4°C. got rode up ~300m and broke through the cloud. it was so hot on the climb that i had to lose the t-shirt (admittedly not a nice sight, but the mum & daughter we kept leap-frogging didn't seem to mind).
but, i kept getting the shakes and needed to stop and eat (well three times on a 1000hm climb). after eating i'd feel fine and power off and then about 20 minutes later my power would drop off and i'd be spinning along in the granny gear till i gave up and pulled out another bananna, musli bar or some peanuts.
eventually made it to the top (amazing inversion and an awesome, clear view across the alps to Zugspitze, Wilden Kaiser and even Groß Glockner.. will get some photos on line) but was a sweaty mess. we decided to ride a rather technical descent - my kind of "thing". i like tricky, technical "verblockt" trails. but this time it just didn't come together.
i felt i couldn't flick the bike around as i usually would. i could not balance, ride slow or pick and hold a line. my foot slipped off the pedal a few times in less than optimum moments. i kept striking the pedals and my feet got hung up on a few roots which nearly had me off and free-falling down a rather large cliff.
i've ridden this trail before and was happy as larry. i don't know why i was so crap on the bike today.
nothing came together. i felt like a sack of spuds.
my mate on the other hand was beaming from ear to ear and usually the tricky-tech stuff isn#t his cup of hot choclit (he doesn't really drink tea).
why?
Sounds like you could be coming down wi something, flu or something similar or maybe just one of those "off" days that you can't do anything about and you should really put the bike back in the shed and go for a walk or read a book.
Back when i was semi serious about training and racing i used to take my pulse and temp first thing on waking up in the morning and decide my daily bike/training routine dependant on what my results were, when i started to follow this regime in the early days i often decided to push it anyway despite noticing a slightly elevated temp and increased heart rate upon waking and those days were often the clumsy/lethargic/out of sorts rides that you described above, nothing really flowed and everything i attempted seemed to be more of an effort, as i got further into my training i learned to listen to my body more and i often left the bike in the house and spent a day out walking or gardening or at least doing something but not stressing myself like i would have been doing on the bike.
Or perhaps you pissed the trail fairies off somehow and they decided to put a hex on you, did you run over a fly agaric mushroom?.