Otherwise in good shape—why does biking uphill make me want to pass out?
April 11, 2020 11:02 AM Subscribe
I've biked all my life, and all my life hills have made me feel faint. What's up with that?
I'm a middle-aged woman who's biked since childhood. I can handle moderate distance. When I'm riding regularly, I can commute six miles to work and six miles back, and can do a 20+ mile day if I don't mind being sore for a while.
I can ride reasonably fast, too. I'm not a racer, but I can keep up.
But riding up a hill in particular has always made me want to pass out. Sometimes I need to lie down on the side of the road for a few minutes before I feel steady again. It's not that my muscles crap out, or at least it doesn't feel like that's it. I just get lightheaded and headachy and my lungs hurt and I need to lie down.
This has happened my whole adult life. (It's definitely not new enough to be a coronavirus symptom.) I talked to a doctor a while ago and they did some tests and said my heart and lungs were fine.
What might be causing this? Is it something I can fix with a certain kind of workout or a certain kind of bike?
I'm a middle-aged woman who's biked since childhood. I can handle moderate distance. When I'm riding regularly, I can commute six miles to work and six miles back, and can do a 20+ mile day if I don't mind being sore for a while.
I can ride reasonably fast, too. I'm not a racer, but I can keep up.
But riding up a hill in particular has always made me want to pass out. Sometimes I need to lie down on the side of the road for a few minutes before I feel steady again. It's not that my muscles crap out, or at least it doesn't feel like that's it. I just get lightheaded and headachy and my lungs hurt and I need to lie down.
This has happened my whole adult life. (It's definitely not new enough to be a coronavirus symptom.) I talked to a doctor a while ago and they did some tests and said my heart and lungs were fine.
What might be causing this? Is it something I can fix with a certain kind of workout or a certain kind of bike?
Perhaps you could change your hill-climbing behavior, and see if it makes any difference.
Does your pedalling cadence change significantly when you pedal up a hill?
Do you slow down when you climb a hill?
Do you change gears before you feel the extra work of climbing the hill?
posted by the Real Dan at 11:16 AM on April 11, 2020 [7 favorites]
Does your pedalling cadence change significantly when you pedal up a hill?
Do you slow down when you climb a hill?
Do you change gears before you feel the extra work of climbing the hill?
posted by the Real Dan at 11:16 AM on April 11, 2020 [7 favorites]
Is your bike geared to let you spin at a normal cadence, or do you have to stand up on the pedals?
posted by jon1270 at 11:18 AM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by jon1270 at 11:18 AM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Oh shit, yeah, this is really similar to the feeling I get when I swim for more distance than I can really handle. (Which has decreased a lot — I used to be a very strong swimmer as a kid, but not anymore.)
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:19 AM on April 11, 2020
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:19 AM on April 11, 2020
I have exercise-induced asthma that was diagnosed in adulthood, and using an albuterol inhaler has made a big difference in my ability to breathe through high-intensity exercise. You could ask a doctor if you might have this form of asthma too.
posted by vegartanipla at 11:22 AM on April 11, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by vegartanipla at 11:22 AM on April 11, 2020 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: I've always been a pedal-stander, even on bikes with a lot of gears. Riding uphill in a low enough gear that they spin freely makes me feel like I'm going to start moving so slowly that I might fall over.
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:24 AM on April 11, 2020
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:24 AM on April 11, 2020
Does your pedalling cadence change significantly when you pedal up a hill?
Do you slow down when you climb a hill?
Do you change gears before you feel the extra work of climbing the hill?
I realize this is the dumbest of explanations, but this used to happen to me, and it was because I had an old & terrible bike, had bad hill climbing behavior (not shifting gears properly), and also my bad bike compounded my bad gearing behavior. Once I got a better bike and started shifting properly hills that used to wipe me out became kind of tame. (I have a secondary bike that I use sometimes that has bad shifting but now that I'm accustomed to better shifting on my good bike, it's had an impact there too -- so I don't mean to say that getting a new bike is required.)
On preview: yeah, pedal standing is maybe a sign that it's at least partly these issues :-). Also maybe consider adjusting your seat higher? some background info.
posted by advil at 11:30 AM on April 11, 2020 [7 favorites]
Do you slow down when you climb a hill?
Do you change gears before you feel the extra work of climbing the hill?
I realize this is the dumbest of explanations, but this used to happen to me, and it was because I had an old & terrible bike, had bad hill climbing behavior (not shifting gears properly), and also my bad bike compounded my bad gearing behavior. Once I got a better bike and started shifting properly hills that used to wipe me out became kind of tame. (I have a secondary bike that I use sometimes that has bad shifting but now that I'm accustomed to better shifting on my good bike, it's had an impact there too -- so I don't mean to say that getting a new bike is required.)
On preview: yeah, pedal standing is maybe a sign that it's at least partly these issues :-). Also maybe consider adjusting your seat higher? some background info.
posted by advil at 11:30 AM on April 11, 2020 [7 favorites]
(oh, and I got rid of my old bike by pedal standing too much and finally cracking an axle.)
posted by advil at 11:30 AM on April 11, 2020
posted by advil at 11:30 AM on April 11, 2020
Sorry I don't have a solution, but you're not alone. My partner has a similar issue. At first we thought it was exercise induced asthma but she only has this happen with biking. While biking uphill she's huffing and puffing behind everyone else, but with hiking uphill, she's charging along in front!
posted by oxisos at 11:36 AM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by oxisos at 11:36 AM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Oh yeah, hiking uphill is totally fine. Which might support the folks saying that it's a gear/technique problem and not a me problem.
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:37 AM on April 11, 2020
posted by nebulawindphone at 11:37 AM on April 11, 2020
Fwiw, stability at low speeds varies tremendously with frame geometry. Some bikes handle that low-speed uphill spinning very well.
posted by jon1270 at 11:38 AM on April 11, 2020
posted by jon1270 at 11:38 AM on April 11, 2020
If you are breathing harder when going uphill, that's because you are working harder! Going up hills is tough and we can all get light-headed by going uphill faster than our hearts and lungs can supply the power. If you find the level of effort uncomfortable, reduce the effort by slowing down. This will mean that you have to gear down too, otherwise you might reach a point where you're not strong enough to keep turning the pedals, even if you stand on them.
For best results on longer rides, try riding at a constant effort. That is, try to maintain a similar level of work regardless of the terrain. This means slowing down when going uphill or into a headwind, and speeding up when going downhill or with a tailwind. Pay attention to the rate and volume of breathing and adapt your speed and gearing accordingly.
If you find that you don't have low enough gears to do this, or if the bike is in poor repair and you have trouble selecting the gear you need, you might look at getting a new bike. But otherwise your existing bike ought to be fine.
posted by cyanistes at 12:31 PM on April 11, 2020
For best results on longer rides, try riding at a constant effort. That is, try to maintain a similar level of work regardless of the terrain. This means slowing down when going uphill or into a headwind, and speeding up when going downhill or with a tailwind. Pay attention to the rate and volume of breathing and adapt your speed and gearing accordingly.
If you find that you don't have low enough gears to do this, or if the bike is in poor repair and you have trouble selecting the gear you need, you might look at getting a new bike. But otherwise your existing bike ought to be fine.
posted by cyanistes at 12:31 PM on April 11, 2020
Riding a bicycle at a moderate pace on flat ground is often as easy as walking. Riding a bike up a hill in the wrong gear can be hard like sprinting or lifting heavy weights. Do you exercise, work out, run, or otherwise exert yourself hard? I only ask because "being in good shape" means dramatically different things to different people.
posted by daveliepmann at 1:00 PM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by daveliepmann at 1:00 PM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
It might be helpful to wear a heart rate monitor especially one that records a session so you can analyze afterwards. You may find a upper heart rate which triggers the symptoms. Monitor the heart rate as you climb hills and adjust your behavior (speed, cadence, breathing, etc.) to stay within your comfort zone.
posted by conrad53 at 1:07 PM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by conrad53 at 1:07 PM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
Nthing other folks who suggest it's a gearing issue, but part of this is just practice. I rode about 700mi in southern China a few years back, and would spend entire days climbing one hill after another. When you're not thinking about a hill as one challenge you have to struggle through and be done with (like when you're climbing a single hill), but something you have to maintain stamina for the duration of, it becomes a lot easier to slow down and trudge through it rather than mustering a burst of energy to get to the top. That burst of energy, if it works, is great! But if it doesn't, you're exhausted and still have more climbing to go. So: slow down! Don't tire yourself out on one last push. Instead, focus on maintaining a similar level of exertion throughout, even if that means going so slowly you feel silly, or unstable. That's what those gears are for!
>> I can commute six miles to work and six miles back, and can do a 20+ mile day if I don't mind being sore for a while.
If you commute twelve miles a day on the regular but 20+ miles leaves you sore, there's something wrong with your setup. I'd seriously consider reading up on cycling ergonomics and making some changes to your bike: can you raise/lower your handlebars or seat? Do you need a longer stem, or a shorter one? What part of you is sore, exactly?
An anecdote: when I bought my first touring bike, it was a Surly Long Haul Trucker I found on deep discount at Black Mountain Cyclery, a fantastic tiny shop up in Pt. Reyes Station. It was unequivocally just a hair too big for me, a 56cm rather than a 54cm frame. But I was new to thinking about frame geometry and figured it'd work. It never really felt great, and when I did my first tour (the Southern Tier from Palm Desert to El Paso), I had excruciating pain between my shoulderblades every night. My next tour was pretty hard, too. For my third or fourth, I was working in China for a short-term contract and hadn't brought my bike (because it's expensive to fly with bikes and I had a multi-leg trip with several stop-overs after the fact), so when my partner and I decided to ride from Yunnan to the border of Laos, I figured I'd buy a "cheap" touring bike there. I was able to get a bottom-of-the-line Giant mountain bike from a shop in Kunming for a little over $200. That trip was pretty intimidating--it was all climbing, which I'd never done and had mostly picked convoluted routes in order to avoid more than the occasional day of uphill slog. But to my utter astonishment, I'd never felt better on a bike: the Giant fit so much more comfortably than my much higher-end touring bike. When I got home to the US, I set a Craigslist alert for a 54cm Long Haul Trucker frame, found one within a week, and immediately swapped all the parts from my old bike onto the new frame. I've used the "new" bike on another couple tours, and holy gods it's so much more comfortable even though it's almost exactly the same, just 2cm smaller. This isn't to say that a new bike will fix what ails ye, but there may be some super-simple adjustments you can make at home or with the help of a local bike shop that will make your rides far easier on your body.
The other suggestion I have for you, which is kind of a smartass suggestion coming from someone who's lying on their couch right now and hasn't ridden a bike once in the past month (me!): ride more, and ride longer distances! Getting your body and spirit familiar with what it feels like to ride 40mi, and 60mi, will really help you troubleshoot the difference between tiredness, being out of shape, and issues of fit/comfort.
posted by tapir-whorf at 1:41 PM on April 11, 2020 [6 favorites]
>> I can commute six miles to work and six miles back, and can do a 20+ mile day if I don't mind being sore for a while.
If you commute twelve miles a day on the regular but 20+ miles leaves you sore, there's something wrong with your setup. I'd seriously consider reading up on cycling ergonomics and making some changes to your bike: can you raise/lower your handlebars or seat? Do you need a longer stem, or a shorter one? What part of you is sore, exactly?
An anecdote: when I bought my first touring bike, it was a Surly Long Haul Trucker I found on deep discount at Black Mountain Cyclery, a fantastic tiny shop up in Pt. Reyes Station. It was unequivocally just a hair too big for me, a 56cm rather than a 54cm frame. But I was new to thinking about frame geometry and figured it'd work. It never really felt great, and when I did my first tour (the Southern Tier from Palm Desert to El Paso), I had excruciating pain between my shoulderblades every night. My next tour was pretty hard, too. For my third or fourth, I was working in China for a short-term contract and hadn't brought my bike (because it's expensive to fly with bikes and I had a multi-leg trip with several stop-overs after the fact), so when my partner and I decided to ride from Yunnan to the border of Laos, I figured I'd buy a "cheap" touring bike there. I was able to get a bottom-of-the-line Giant mountain bike from a shop in Kunming for a little over $200. That trip was pretty intimidating--it was all climbing, which I'd never done and had mostly picked convoluted routes in order to avoid more than the occasional day of uphill slog. But to my utter astonishment, I'd never felt better on a bike: the Giant fit so much more comfortably than my much higher-end touring bike. When I got home to the US, I set a Craigslist alert for a 54cm Long Haul Trucker frame, found one within a week, and immediately swapped all the parts from my old bike onto the new frame. I've used the "new" bike on another couple tours, and holy gods it's so much more comfortable even though it's almost exactly the same, just 2cm smaller. This isn't to say that a new bike will fix what ails ye, but there may be some super-simple adjustments you can make at home or with the help of a local bike shop that will make your rides far easier on your body.
The other suggestion I have for you, which is kind of a smartass suggestion coming from someone who's lying on their couch right now and hasn't ridden a bike once in the past month (me!): ride more, and ride longer distances! Getting your body and spirit familiar with what it feels like to ride 40mi, and 60mi, will really help you troubleshoot the difference between tiredness, being out of shape, and issues of fit/comfort.
posted by tapir-whorf at 1:41 PM on April 11, 2020 [6 favorites]
Response by poster: If you commute twelve miles a day on the regular but 20+ miles leaves you sore, there's something wrong with your setup. I'd seriously consider reading up on cycling ergonomics and making some changes to your bike: can you raise/lower your handlebars or seat? Do you need a longer stem, or a shorter one? What part of you is sore, exactly?
My leg muscles, from working harder than normal. Twelve miles a day is definitely a workout (I don't/can't do it every single day; usually I take at least one day off in between), and twenty is a hard workout. Does that really seem like a problem? I'm willing to listen but my instinct is to be surprised — I thought sore muscles after a hard ride were normal.
posted by nebulawindphone at 2:12 PM on April 11, 2020
My leg muscles, from working harder than normal. Twelve miles a day is definitely a workout (I don't/can't do it every single day; usually I take at least one day off in between), and twenty is a hard workout. Does that really seem like a problem? I'm willing to listen but my instinct is to be surprised — I thought sore muscles after a hard ride were normal.
posted by nebulawindphone at 2:12 PM on April 11, 2020
>I've always been a pedal-stander, even on bikes with a lot of gears. Riding uphill in a low enough gear that they spin freely makes me feel like I'm going to start moving so slowly that I might fall over.
Yeah, there is the answer.
What happens is, hills that are either small in the sense of relatively little overall altitude gained, or very, very gradual and also pretty short, you can just stand on your pedals and stomp your way up, no problem.
You can even go up a pretty steep hill using this method--as long as it is steep but very short and you gain some momentum going into it.
But when you go up a hill that is too steep for too long--or even just moderately steep but going on for more than a minute or so of climbing--if you don't gear down but just keep mashing the pedals your body soon goes into a very, very different zone of effort than what you normally do when cycling in flatt-ish areas and in very small (even if steep) hills.
This zone is what cyclists (and other athletes/medical people) call the anaerobic zone. It is basically a short burst of power that your body can produce, but that it cannot sustain. A typical anaerobic burst might be something like 30 seconds and the max that is usually considered anaerobic is about 3 minutes.
So: You're going anaerobic, every hill you normally have to climb except this one is small enough that you can just do it with this anaerobic burst, but this hill is just long enough that you can't. So you run through your anaerobic reserves, they run out, and there you are.
You feel like you literally can't proceed.
And--you can't, until you recover for a while.
As others have said, the remedy is to gear down and limit your effort in a much more measured way.
If you had a heart rate monitor--such as you can now get on a fitness watch--you would see it going up to very near your max heart rate and then sticking there until you finally give out. You can do that all right--anyone can. But only for a couple of minutes at most, and then you simply can't proceed any longer.
In fact what you are doing is somewhat similar to a stress test--which deliberately takes your heart rate up to the maximum. It is designed both to find out what the maximum is and to find out what happens to your heart and circulatory system when it's driven to that point.
How you feel when you have to stop mid-climb is about the same way people typically feel at the end of a stress test, when their heart rate has been gradually driven up to the max possible. You're completely exhausted, spent, you can't go a step or a pedal stroke further. You basically have to collapse and recover for a while.
What people/athletes do who don't want to give out after the first 2-3 minutes is, they carefully allocate and limit their effort. In terms of bicycling this means both gearing down and and withholding yourself from your maximum possible effort. (You have to gear down to do this--otherwise you soon reach a point where the effort it takes to turn the pedals over one more time is greater than the amount you can produce without going/staying anaerobic.)
Another similar threshold is the FTP or lactate threshold. This would be defined as the maximum amount of effort/energy output that a person can maintain consistently for 60 minutes. This is most conveniently measured in terms of your maximum heartrate, and usually it is something like 80% of your max heartrate.
So another way to explain what you are doing is going into the 90-100% max heartrate zone. You can do that for a couple of minutes, but it's not sustainable for a whole hour, or even really for five minutes or maybe even two minutes (depending on how hard you are going at it). At that point you conk out and have to spend a fair amount of time recovering before you can go on.
Remedy to this--and a prime reason cyclists, runners, and other endurance athletes often wear a heart rate monitor--is to keep your heart rate more in the 80-90% range, and no more than that, even when doing your hardest effort, such as hill climbing.
If you're hitting your 90% heart rate range you immediately shift down and reduce effort.
Of course, you don't absolutely need a heart rate monitor to do this. Most people do it naturally--they can feel what power output they can or cannot maintain over (say) a two hour ride and then allocate their effort carefully, measured simply by how they feel, to make sure they don't flame out prematurely.
You don't seem to be very aware of that going on as it is happening, however, so it might be useful to train yourself by means of something like a heart rate monitor, to be more aware of how you feel at each stage of the power output scale (as explained by for example the chart here).
One thing that for example pro athletes do is train themselves to know quite a bit more precisely than the average person does, exactly where they are on that scale so that they can really accurately gauge their performance and wring every last possible bit of energy out of themselves when it counts. But they use a lot of training aids like heart rate monitors as part of that training.
posted by flug at 2:38 PM on April 11, 2020 [16 favorites]
Yeah, there is the answer.
What happens is, hills that are either small in the sense of relatively little overall altitude gained, or very, very gradual and also pretty short, you can just stand on your pedals and stomp your way up, no problem.
You can even go up a pretty steep hill using this method--as long as it is steep but very short and you gain some momentum going into it.
But when you go up a hill that is too steep for too long--or even just moderately steep but going on for more than a minute or so of climbing--if you don't gear down but just keep mashing the pedals your body soon goes into a very, very different zone of effort than what you normally do when cycling in flatt-ish areas and in very small (even if steep) hills.
This zone is what cyclists (and other athletes/medical people) call the anaerobic zone. It is basically a short burst of power that your body can produce, but that it cannot sustain. A typical anaerobic burst might be something like 30 seconds and the max that is usually considered anaerobic is about 3 minutes.
So: You're going anaerobic, every hill you normally have to climb except this one is small enough that you can just do it with this anaerobic burst, but this hill is just long enough that you can't. So you run through your anaerobic reserves, they run out, and there you are.
You feel like you literally can't proceed.
And--you can't, until you recover for a while.
As others have said, the remedy is to gear down and limit your effort in a much more measured way.
If you had a heart rate monitor--such as you can now get on a fitness watch--you would see it going up to very near your max heart rate and then sticking there until you finally give out. You can do that all right--anyone can. But only for a couple of minutes at most, and then you simply can't proceed any longer.
In fact what you are doing is somewhat similar to a stress test--which deliberately takes your heart rate up to the maximum. It is designed both to find out what the maximum is and to find out what happens to your heart and circulatory system when it's driven to that point.
How you feel when you have to stop mid-climb is about the same way people typically feel at the end of a stress test, when their heart rate has been gradually driven up to the max possible. You're completely exhausted, spent, you can't go a step or a pedal stroke further. You basically have to collapse and recover for a while.
What people/athletes do who don't want to give out after the first 2-3 minutes is, they carefully allocate and limit their effort. In terms of bicycling this means both gearing down and and withholding yourself from your maximum possible effort. (You have to gear down to do this--otherwise you soon reach a point where the effort it takes to turn the pedals over one more time is greater than the amount you can produce without going/staying anaerobic.)
Another similar threshold is the FTP or lactate threshold. This would be defined as the maximum amount of effort/energy output that a person can maintain consistently for 60 minutes. This is most conveniently measured in terms of your maximum heartrate, and usually it is something like 80% of your max heartrate.
So another way to explain what you are doing is going into the 90-100% max heartrate zone. You can do that for a couple of minutes, but it's not sustainable for a whole hour, or even really for five minutes or maybe even two minutes (depending on how hard you are going at it). At that point you conk out and have to spend a fair amount of time recovering before you can go on.
Remedy to this--and a prime reason cyclists, runners, and other endurance athletes often wear a heart rate monitor--is to keep your heart rate more in the 80-90% range, and no more than that, even when doing your hardest effort, such as hill climbing.
If you're hitting your 90% heart rate range you immediately shift down and reduce effort.
Of course, you don't absolutely need a heart rate monitor to do this. Most people do it naturally--they can feel what power output they can or cannot maintain over (say) a two hour ride and then allocate their effort carefully, measured simply by how they feel, to make sure they don't flame out prematurely.
You don't seem to be very aware of that going on as it is happening, however, so it might be useful to train yourself by means of something like a heart rate monitor, to be more aware of how you feel at each stage of the power output scale (as explained by for example the chart here).
One thing that for example pro athletes do is train themselves to know quite a bit more precisely than the average person does, exactly where they are on that scale so that they can really accurately gauge their performance and wring every last possible bit of energy out of themselves when it counts. But they use a lot of training aids like heart rate monitors as part of that training.
posted by flug at 2:38 PM on April 11, 2020 [16 favorites]
> My leg muscles, from working harder than normal.
Again you are pushing a way too large gear for way too long.
It actually might not be a terrible form of exercise or muscle strengthening or whatever, but normally someone who routinely rides 12 miles a day at a nice brisk pace could rather easily ride 50-60 miles in a day, anyway, and the "soreness" they would report afterwards would be their rear end or hands/arms/shoulders/back or other bike-fit type issues, not particularly muscle soreness.
("My rear end" or "my shoulders" are the kinds of answers I expected you to give and I must admit I was a bit surprised when you answered otherwise. Though perhaps not as surprised as I would have been, since I had just been thinking through why you can't ride up rather ordinary hills without cracking up in the middle of them. The root cause of both is about the same.)
FWIW I generally ride ~20-ish miles a day, varying between maybe 5-10 and 20-30 per day, especially in these times of COVID, and I'm not muscle-sore at all, not at all, not even 1%. Even if I go for a week or two or three or four with no particular riding at all and then jump into 20 miles suddenly, still 0% muscle sore.
Now someone who hasn't been riding at all and hasn't been using those muscles at all and gradually works up from 1 to 2 to 5 to 10 to 15 to 20 miles over a period of a few weeks or months, probably will feel some muscle soreness in doing that.
But someone who is riding 12 miles a day really shouldn't. Or to put it another way, it would be very unusual among that cohort to feel really sore after a 20-mile ride. If everyone felt that bad after a (mere) 20 mile ride you'd find hardly anyone at all riding distances of 15-20 miles or longer.
But in fact among the "serious" bike riding crew distances of 20 miles or so are very, very much on the short end of things. If you offer a bike ride with say 20, 40, 75, and 100 mile distances you'll find find 1/3 do 40, 1/3 do 75, and 1/3 do 100 and 0% do the 20.
Just kidding, m-a-y-b-e 5-10% will do the 20-miler.
(Based on running like 50 bike rides over the past 20 years. The short distances are so unpopular that we continually debate whether we should offer them at all.)
Again, I don't know that riding 20 miles and feeling muscle-sore is wrong or bad per se. It's just that it is very, very possible--and far more typical--to be able to ride that type of distance without that type of muscle soreness, especially if you ride a distance half that long or more regularly.
And the main technique for doing so would be to shift a gear or maybe two down and spin a bit faster while still maintaining the same overall speed and effort. What that does is shift more of the workload onto your cardiovascular system and less onto your leg muscles per se.
posted by flug at 2:57 PM on April 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
Again you are pushing a way too large gear for way too long.
It actually might not be a terrible form of exercise or muscle strengthening or whatever, but normally someone who routinely rides 12 miles a day at a nice brisk pace could rather easily ride 50-60 miles in a day, anyway, and the "soreness" they would report afterwards would be their rear end or hands/arms/shoulders/back or other bike-fit type issues, not particularly muscle soreness.
("My rear end" or "my shoulders" are the kinds of answers I expected you to give and I must admit I was a bit surprised when you answered otherwise. Though perhaps not as surprised as I would have been, since I had just been thinking through why you can't ride up rather ordinary hills without cracking up in the middle of them. The root cause of both is about the same.)
FWIW I generally ride ~20-ish miles a day, varying between maybe 5-10 and 20-30 per day, especially in these times of COVID, and I'm not muscle-sore at all, not at all, not even 1%. Even if I go for a week or two or three or four with no particular riding at all and then jump into 20 miles suddenly, still 0% muscle sore.
Now someone who hasn't been riding at all and hasn't been using those muscles at all and gradually works up from 1 to 2 to 5 to 10 to 15 to 20 miles over a period of a few weeks or months, probably will feel some muscle soreness in doing that.
But someone who is riding 12 miles a day really shouldn't. Or to put it another way, it would be very unusual among that cohort to feel really sore after a 20-mile ride. If everyone felt that bad after a (mere) 20 mile ride you'd find hardly anyone at all riding distances of 15-20 miles or longer.
But in fact among the "serious" bike riding crew distances of 20 miles or so are very, very much on the short end of things. If you offer a bike ride with say 20, 40, 75, and 100 mile distances you'll find find 1/3 do 40, 1/3 do 75, and 1/3 do 100 and 0% do the 20.
Just kidding, m-a-y-b-e 5-10% will do the 20-miler.
(Based on running like 50 bike rides over the past 20 years. The short distances are so unpopular that we continually debate whether we should offer them at all.)
Again, I don't know that riding 20 miles and feeling muscle-sore is wrong or bad per se. It's just that it is very, very possible--and far more typical--to be able to ride that type of distance without that type of muscle soreness, especially if you ride a distance half that long or more regularly.
And the main technique for doing so would be to shift a gear or maybe two down and spin a bit faster while still maintaining the same overall speed and effort. What that does is shift more of the workload onto your cardiovascular system and less onto your leg muscles per se.
posted by flug at 2:57 PM on April 11, 2020 [5 favorites]
I could whomp out 20-25 miles without a problem, but 30+ always left me sore. Then one day I did 57 miles, which was about 20 miles more than I'd planned, and my muscles were SO SORE. That night I couldn't even sleep for the pain. Then, two days later, I woke up in the morning and...nothing hurt even a little bit. I wondered what was wrong. Just for laughs, I went out and did a 40-mile ride, two days after the 57-mile ride that killed me. I had no pain at all. Felt like I did at 20 miles.
So it could just be a "personal record" sort of thing. Once you push past your own envelope, you can do it again with less of an impact.
posted by Autumnheart at 6:02 PM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
So it could just be a "personal record" sort of thing. Once you push past your own envelope, you can do it again with less of an impact.
posted by Autumnheart at 6:02 PM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
To repeat what other people have basically said: I used to have this problem walking up mountains. Then one day, I decided to try going however slowly I had to go to keep from breathing heavily. And GOD it felt slow... plodding step by step. Except, I could keep going forever, and even though it was a popular trail, I was passing people and people weren't passing me.
posted by wotsac at 6:12 PM on April 11, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by wotsac at 6:12 PM on April 11, 2020 [3 favorites]
I'd sort of held off on responding, nebulawindphone, because I tend to be a know-it-all! So I'm glad flug confirmed far more knowledgeably what I'd been trying to articulate!
As someone who's both an experienced cyclist and a couch potato, I can confirm that it's pretty unusual that you're consistently getting sore calves. I'm a slug most of the time, but go on 2-3 week bike tours once or twice a year, usually starting out with 40-65mi/day after months of not really exercising much more than a long walk every few days. Even then, even if the rest of me feels like shit, the only time I can remember having sore calves was after a day of cycling 30mi uphill in cold rain, actually shivering. When I do feel sore, if it's from riding uphill it's probably my glutes, because they don't get much of a workout in my ordinary life. If I haven't ridden much recently and go on a 40mi+ ride, my wrists might also be sore from placing too much pressure on the palms of my hands to compensate for weak core muscles.
I'd experiment with your seat height. Seated, your unbent leg should be ever so slightly less than fully extended, not so much bent as not locked. If it's bent any more than this, you lose comfort and efficiency on your downstroke. Also, next time you're able to go on a longer ride somewhere without stoplights and cross-traffic, find a comfortable, fast cadence you can maintain for a few miles without over-exerting yourself. You should feel powerful and strong without pushing yourself; if you need to catch your breath, slow down a bit until you find a sweet spot where your level of exertion feels good and even energizing. At first this may be slower than you expect, and that's totally fine! But it's more about training your body and psyche to think of cycling as a long-duration pursuit, rather than a cardio-sprint.
>> So it could just be a "personal record" sort of thing. Once you push past your own envelope, you can do it again with less of an impact.
I have no idea why this is a thing, but it totally is. The first time I went for a 40mi ride, I was so amazed I could even do such a thing! Now it feels kind of silly; I think duh, 40mi is easy! But it wasn't until I'd done it a couple times. Then it became no big deal at all.
Like any scary thing, the first time you do something is often the hardest--but it teaches you a lot about the process. Try to go for a few more-than-20mi rides so that they become no big deal. I'm pretty sure it'll help make the 6mi rides feel easier, too, and not just because you're in better shape.
posted by tapir-whorf at 6:17 PM on April 11, 2020
As someone who's both an experienced cyclist and a couch potato, I can confirm that it's pretty unusual that you're consistently getting sore calves. I'm a slug most of the time, but go on 2-3 week bike tours once or twice a year, usually starting out with 40-65mi/day after months of not really exercising much more than a long walk every few days. Even then, even if the rest of me feels like shit, the only time I can remember having sore calves was after a day of cycling 30mi uphill in cold rain, actually shivering. When I do feel sore, if it's from riding uphill it's probably my glutes, because they don't get much of a workout in my ordinary life. If I haven't ridden much recently and go on a 40mi+ ride, my wrists might also be sore from placing too much pressure on the palms of my hands to compensate for weak core muscles.
I'd experiment with your seat height. Seated, your unbent leg should be ever so slightly less than fully extended, not so much bent as not locked. If it's bent any more than this, you lose comfort and efficiency on your downstroke. Also, next time you're able to go on a longer ride somewhere without stoplights and cross-traffic, find a comfortable, fast cadence you can maintain for a few miles without over-exerting yourself. You should feel powerful and strong without pushing yourself; if you need to catch your breath, slow down a bit until you find a sweet spot where your level of exertion feels good and even energizing. At first this may be slower than you expect, and that's totally fine! But it's more about training your body and psyche to think of cycling as a long-duration pursuit, rather than a cardio-sprint.
>> So it could just be a "personal record" sort of thing. Once you push past your own envelope, you can do it again with less of an impact.
I have no idea why this is a thing, but it totally is. The first time I went for a 40mi ride, I was so amazed I could even do such a thing! Now it feels kind of silly; I think duh, 40mi is easy! But it wasn't until I'd done it a couple times. Then it became no big deal at all.
Like any scary thing, the first time you do something is often the hardest--but it teaches you a lot about the process. Try to go for a few more-than-20mi rides so that they become no big deal. I'm pretty sure it'll help make the 6mi rides feel easier, too, and not just because you're in better shape.
posted by tapir-whorf at 6:17 PM on April 11, 2020
Wondering if it could also be a low blood pressure thing, that is if you also tend to get light-headed when you stand up too quickly. It might help to cut out alcohol for a bit and make sure you're well hydrated when you go for a ride (an electrolyte powder might help do that).
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:49 PM on April 11, 2020
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:49 PM on April 11, 2020
I was a fairly fast rider, and pretty fast up hill as well. Because my athletic talent is meagre at best, I achieved this by riding fairly close to my limit on the flats, and over it on the hills. Over 200bpm. I could sustain a high level of output for five hours (>100mi) but I ended up injuring my heart. Where my heart rate would be something like 140, for comparison, a pro's would be around 80. It's apples to oranges, but it shows that I was working way, way harder than an actual fast rider would have been on similar terrain at the same speed.
If you want to get a subjective idea of how hard you're working, check out some footage of racers on Youtube. See how they can eat and talk comfortably as they're riding along at 40km/h? I could never do that. I'd gasp and inhale my food. That was the first sign that I was not as strong as I thought I was. If you feel like you're working harder than that at your recreational pace, it's a sign.
Now, consider that a body experiences gravity as an acceleration. When you ride at a constant velocity uphill, you are accelerating. This requires multiples of the power you'd require riding on the level.
Taking those things together, it's possible that you ordinarily ride close to your limit and that hitting the hills pushes you way over it. This could be why you experience exhaustion over such short distances, too. I would definitely try a heart rate monitor, and talk to someone knowledgeable enough to help you interpret the results. And if you can, use it to pace yourself, or train to improve your performance, if that's what you want.
All of the above assumes that there are no other issues that other members talked about like bike fit, etc.
posted by klanawa at 8:58 PM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
If you want to get a subjective idea of how hard you're working, check out some footage of racers on Youtube. See how they can eat and talk comfortably as they're riding along at 40km/h? I could never do that. I'd gasp and inhale my food. That was the first sign that I was not as strong as I thought I was. If you feel like you're working harder than that at your recreational pace, it's a sign.
Now, consider that a body experiences gravity as an acceleration. When you ride at a constant velocity uphill, you are accelerating. This requires multiples of the power you'd require riding on the level.
Taking those things together, it's possible that you ordinarily ride close to your limit and that hitting the hills pushes you way over it. This could be why you experience exhaustion over such short distances, too. I would definitely try a heart rate monitor, and talk to someone knowledgeable enough to help you interpret the results. And if you can, use it to pace yourself, or train to improve your performance, if that's what you want.
All of the above assumes that there are no other issues that other members talked about like bike fit, etc.
posted by klanawa at 8:58 PM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]
When you ride at a constant velocity uphill, you are accelerating.
To be precise, this isn't correct. You are doing more work, though, on top of the usual effort you'd use to maintain the same speed on flat ground.
posted by alexei at 9:20 PM on April 11, 2020
To be precise, this isn't correct. You are doing more work, though, on top of the usual effort you'd use to maintain the same speed on flat ground.
posted by alexei at 9:20 PM on April 11, 2020
To be precise, this isn't correct.
You're doing more work due to an opposing force, a function of your mass, the incline and the acceleration of gravity (F=ma). If I wanted to be especially pedantic I suppose I could try to explain it in terms of space-time curvature, but that would seem a bit performative. (Plus, I'd have no idea what I was talking about.)
posted by klanawa at 11:54 PM on April 11, 2020
You're doing more work due to an opposing force, a function of your mass, the incline and the acceleration of gravity (F=ma). If I wanted to be especially pedantic I suppose I could try to explain it in terms of space-time curvature, but that would seem a bit performative. (Plus, I'd have no idea what I was talking about.)
posted by klanawa at 11:54 PM on April 11, 2020
Echoing some of the above - gear right down and spin, while still sitting in the saddle.
When I started cycling I used to try to mash my way up hills, partly because I felt daft going significantly slower than my "flat" pace, and partly because it seemed precarious pootling up so slowly, and I hadn't got to grips with balancing at that speed. (Put as little weight onto the bars as possible; just gently place your hands on them as a guide and the bike won't feel squirrelly. Closer to the middle is better if you have flat bars. The more you practise the stronger your core will become and the easier this becomes.) I also used to feel faint after a short hill, but started being able to climb mountains on a loaded touring bike after learning to gear down and let my legs gently spin away, even if it's at walking pace and this *feels* way too slow.
Remember to match your breathing to your pedal strokes. This also isn't always intuitive for everybody, even if you've cracked it while out hiking. It might be two pedal strokes breathing in, two out, or three in, two out, or some other combination, depending on your pace and the gradient etc. But matching your breathing rhythm to your pedalling rhythm is absolutely crucial (and not something we tend to pay any attention to on the flat, when we're not riding near maximum cardio capacity, so it doesn't tend to enter our heads on hills at first either).
Also echoing that your leg muscles shouldn't really be aching at twenty miles if they regularly handle twelve - once your muscles are accustomed to turning the pedals, they should be fine to go a fair while longer than usual with no great soreness. It might as suggested be an issue of fit, in which case go to a bike shop and see what they think of your positioning on the bike. But I'd suggest riding in a lower gear in the flat would be helpful too. Beginner cyclists (including me a few years ago) tend to ride in too high a gear at too low a cadence. Can you count how many times your legs spin in a minute the next time you're on a flat bit of road? Take a stopwatch. You want it to be at least 70 in a minute, ideally around 80. This puts much less strain on your leg muscles, and your cardio system should happily adjust to this pace, and then your mileage should be mostly determined by cardio fitness rather than your leg muscles. It'll make it seem more intuitive to keep spinning up hills too, rather than trying to hammer your way up out of the saddle. You'll notice most "casual" cyclists riding in way too low a cadence (and the less often they cycle the lower it will usually be), whereas nearly all the keen roadie cyclists seem to ride at a very high one. Aim for high :)
posted by FifteenShocks at 2:18 AM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
When I started cycling I used to try to mash my way up hills, partly because I felt daft going significantly slower than my "flat" pace, and partly because it seemed precarious pootling up so slowly, and I hadn't got to grips with balancing at that speed. (Put as little weight onto the bars as possible; just gently place your hands on them as a guide and the bike won't feel squirrelly. Closer to the middle is better if you have flat bars. The more you practise the stronger your core will become and the easier this becomes.) I also used to feel faint after a short hill, but started being able to climb mountains on a loaded touring bike after learning to gear down and let my legs gently spin away, even if it's at walking pace and this *feels* way too slow.
Remember to match your breathing to your pedal strokes. This also isn't always intuitive for everybody, even if you've cracked it while out hiking. It might be two pedal strokes breathing in, two out, or three in, two out, or some other combination, depending on your pace and the gradient etc. But matching your breathing rhythm to your pedalling rhythm is absolutely crucial (and not something we tend to pay any attention to on the flat, when we're not riding near maximum cardio capacity, so it doesn't tend to enter our heads on hills at first either).
Also echoing that your leg muscles shouldn't really be aching at twenty miles if they regularly handle twelve - once your muscles are accustomed to turning the pedals, they should be fine to go a fair while longer than usual with no great soreness. It might as suggested be an issue of fit, in which case go to a bike shop and see what they think of your positioning on the bike. But I'd suggest riding in a lower gear in the flat would be helpful too. Beginner cyclists (including me a few years ago) tend to ride in too high a gear at too low a cadence. Can you count how many times your legs spin in a minute the next time you're on a flat bit of road? Take a stopwatch. You want it to be at least 70 in a minute, ideally around 80. This puts much less strain on your leg muscles, and your cardio system should happily adjust to this pace, and then your mileage should be mostly determined by cardio fitness rather than your leg muscles. It'll make it seem more intuitive to keep spinning up hills too, rather than trying to hammer your way up out of the saddle. You'll notice most "casual" cyclists riding in way too low a cadence (and the less often they cycle the lower it will usually be), whereas nearly all the keen roadie cyclists seem to ride at a very high one. Aim for high :)
posted by FifteenShocks at 2:18 AM on April 12, 2020 [2 favorites]
Thirding that you're forcing your body to work harder than it's capable of sustaining.
By standing on the pedals, you're actually doing more work than necessary because you're making your leg muscles do both the work necessary to hold your body up off the saddle and the work of pedalling. So not only are you working harder because you're going uphill, you're loading even more wasted effort onto your body on top!
You want to go up that hill sat on the saddle & twiddling the pedals at a decent rpm (60-70 for a non elite cyclist. Elite cyclists aim for even higher) in whichever gear allows you to do that & get to the top without blowing up.
posted by pharm at 7:07 AM on April 12, 2020
By standing on the pedals, you're actually doing more work than necessary because you're making your leg muscles do both the work necessary to hold your body up off the saddle and the work of pedalling. So not only are you working harder because you're going uphill, you're loading even more wasted effort onto your body on top!
You want to go up that hill sat on the saddle & twiddling the pedals at a decent rpm (60-70 for a non elite cyclist. Elite cyclists aim for even higher) in whichever gear allows you to do that & get to the top without blowing up.
posted by pharm at 7:07 AM on April 12, 2020
I'll echo what tapir-whorf and flug said: Check your saddle position. Check your heart rate. Ride a lower gear.
A lot of inexperienced cyclists ride a much lower cadence (pedal speed) than they should—for them, 60 rpm might seem fast, but to an experienced cyclist, that might be the lower limit. I don't know what cadence you've been riding at, but if you're mashing the pedals on hills, I'll bet you are riding below 60 at least on the hills. I recommend getting comfortable with higher cadences in general, and using your gears to maintain a steady cadence. This takes some practice and some time.
Also, climbing a hill requires some technique--you learn when to shift, where to shift your weight, when to stand, in order to get over the hill efficiently. Each hill has its own logic.
posted by adamrice at 9:10 AM on April 12, 2020
A lot of inexperienced cyclists ride a much lower cadence (pedal speed) than they should—for them, 60 rpm might seem fast, but to an experienced cyclist, that might be the lower limit. I don't know what cadence you've been riding at, but if you're mashing the pedals on hills, I'll bet you are riding below 60 at least on the hills. I recommend getting comfortable with higher cadences in general, and using your gears to maintain a steady cadence. This takes some practice and some time.
Also, climbing a hill requires some technique--you learn when to shift, where to shift your weight, when to stand, in order to get over the hill efficiently. Each hill has its own logic.
posted by adamrice at 9:10 AM on April 12, 2020
I have exercise -induced asthma and it behaves similarly to what you described - it only kicks in above a certain exertion level. At low to medium levels, including shallow hills,, I have to soft-pedal and wait to let my husband catch up. At any real hill, he passes me like Im sitting still, and I'll be gasping for breath when he does.
posted by Dashy at 9:35 AM on April 12, 2020
posted by Dashy at 9:35 AM on April 12, 2020
When I go on hikes I tend to get winded on the first moderate hill but after I'm warmed up I have no problem. Here's what I think is happening: Before I'm warmed up my circulation is still operating at a low-exertion level. But now my legs are exerting themselves more and generating a bunch of CO2. But my heart doesn't know that yet because the CO2 is still working its way toward whatever senses it. By the time my heart starts responding I have a lot of CO2 and not enough O2. It takes a while to rebalance everything but once my heart rate is elevated I no longer get winded.
So, based on this theory I'd say that you should gradually ease into your hill climb (and yes, get comfortable with those lower gears) until your heart rate is elevated. It might also help to deliberately breathe more than you normally would on the start of the climb just to get ahead of the game, oxygen-wise, but TBH I always forget to try this until it's too late.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:42 AM on April 12, 2020
So, based on this theory I'd say that you should gradually ease into your hill climb (and yes, get comfortable with those lower gears) until your heart rate is elevated. It might also help to deliberately breathe more than you normally would on the start of the climb just to get ahead of the game, oxygen-wise, but TBH I always forget to try this until it's too late.
posted by sjswitzer at 10:42 AM on April 12, 2020
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posted by less of course at 11:15 AM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]