Hello All - I am new to cycling (and really endurance sport in general) - just over 1 year now and have fallen in love with it and have really progressed a ton (I think my first FTP test was like 185W and now with the AI testing I’m up to 292 at 77.5kg), especially once I started using the structured training with TR.
I did my first “event” in mid June of this year. It was a road “climbing” ride/race. 100k ~4500 ft. of climbing. In short I made a TON of rookie mistakes. Under-estimated riding outside vs. trainer, but mainly fueling mistakes - night before, morning of and especially during the race. All of which led to some cramping issues in the last 20 miles or so.
Having learned from that, my next event was a “gravel” race just three weeks ago. Obviously I am still new, but I would classify it as on the extreme end of gravel - to the point that many many riders used mountain bikes.
This one was shorter (40 miles), but the same amount of climbing. But I thought I did everything I could to prepare for this one - spent A LOT more time riding outdoors. Fueled and hydrated properly (at least I thought). Drank so much water/gatorade the night before that I went to the bathroom at least 5x that night etc.
But still the same problem - in fact ended up cramping even worse than the road ride. The only thing I can think of is that the weather was a lot more extreme (in addition to the terrain) - 80s F, humid etc. Whilst much of my outdoor training was done early on weekend mornings before it would get really hot.
Welcome to cycling. It’s my experience that cramping occurs when you push beyond your current fitness level. It can possibly be made more likely by hydration and temperature, but at the core, it’s fitness. As a new rider, you don’t yet have the base fitness to prevent cramps when you are pushing yourself. Races, hard group rides, longer duration/distance are all likely culprits because you are pushing yourself beyond your current level. My advice is, be patient, push yourself more in training, do some longer rides, and in these events don’t go out too hard because of excitement or fear of missing out. It’s quite rare that folks have some transcendental day on the bike where they ride far and above what they’ve done in training. The numbers you can do in training are about what you will be able to do in the event, so stay within yourself.
For me, cramping was always a hydration issue. You need more than just water though, you need the electrolyte balance. I solved my issues with more salt (I use sodium citrate). In my case, that amounted to between 5 and 10g (depending on effort and heat) per 750mL bottle, in addition to 80-100g+ carb mix, which I consume hourly. Careful with that much salt as it may cause GI issues, especially when new. Others have reported success with magnesium, though I haven’t ever tried as sodium citrate worked for me.
I’m sure fitness will play a factor, though cramping can happen to anyone really.
I suspect you are probably right. Being new, with a majority of my training being based indoors is a big factor. I have always always had a tendency to not be able to pace myself haha. So I think the latest issue was a combination of going out too hard and underestimating the difficulty of the course (gravel). So even though I had done similar length of outdoor rides with an intensity (average power) I was aiming for. That didn’t take into account the terrain. Live and learn I guess
When I think back to the race (I was on a mountain bike) - even on the long uphill portions that were on road, while they weren’t easy, I was able to get into a nice rhythym and hit good power numbers. I just really struggled big time with the up hill gravel portions and I think expended so much energy there
Don’t lay your hat on sodium. It’s almost always fitness. It’s a siren song of “not due to me, but something else”. You’re asking your body to do something it wasn’t ready to perform.
After hearing a number of pros and team managers mention they’ve stopped with the sodium loading (Matt Beers, Bora Handsgroh, others), I also quit with all the sodium loading this summer regardless of temp/humidity outside. Found out it had zero impact on me. None. Turns out your body just purges whatever sodium you load into you and excretes it when sweating. White coated clothing just mean your body has a ton of excess sodium NOT an indicator that you need even more. I no longer have white jerseys and white chin straps. My HR monitor actually lasted a full season too.
Sodium might still be helpful if it helps get more liquid down for you. Also you can utilize it for the ‘camel’ effect of getting a bottle or two of extra liquid in you so you don’t have to carry it within bottles or backpack.
I think your gut feel is probably correct. You’re going out for some combination of longer/harder, and in higher heat than you’re used to doing in your training.
Yea I think so. After the first event I learned so much and thought I had all of that covered (i.e. spending a lot more time on outdoor rides). I tried to simulate as much climbing as possible, but really really underestimated gravel and in particular steep gravel climbs. In hindsight, for where I live vs. where the race was, there really wasn’t a lot that I was going to be able to do to be able to prepare for that properly.
I posted about this in June. My n=1 - the effort in races exceeds what I’ve trained to do. Do you ride with power outside? Can you compare? There is a lot of useful advice in the responses on the thread I posted - about lapping on a head unit to track NP, etc (that’s been the biggest for me). Sadly, the biggest predictor of cramping is a history of cramping. It just sort of sucks but some of us just can’t go as hard as we feel like we can with all the endorphins etc and have to race with data. But maybe you’ll be the exception!
Oh wow that’s crazy - basically the same exact problem/thread haha. Thanks for sharing that.
I think that lapping on the head unit is a great tactic. In this most recent event, I had done at least 2 outdoor rides to try to simulate the effort. Basically I tried to hit the average power I was going for over the same ride time and I had done that with no issues. I even thought I did a really good job in the beginning of the race to take it easy at the beginning. The first little section was a loop on some farmland (grass/dirt) and despite the excitement of the race start etc. I didn’t get caught up in trying to keep up with the leaders - just wanted to hit my power target over the course of the event.
I think I really just ran into trouble in overdoing the effort on the gravel climbs & single track sections which admittedly were new for me.
I guess it’s just something I need to be aware of going forward (the cramping and purposefully managing the effort early on).
I don’t come from an endurance sport background, but the cramping was so surprising to me because I have played a TON of soccer and would play in some sessions for 3 hours and never ever ever cramped. Just different I guess