Terrible legs after 2d in bed without food

Training
1

Hi,
I had some stomac bug which basically put me in bed for the better part of Tue/Wed this week where I could not eat much if at all. Thu I resumed training, did my usual daily volume but kept it very low IF. I still had to stay with mainly white rice. Yesterday (Friday) I upped volume a bit but still low IF, could eat almost normal.
Now with being more or less back to normal I estimate my net weight loss to be around 2Kg.
Before this week I was almost in the best shape since 2y.

My problem is that despite the very light intensity (IF 54%) my legs feel terrible. After each of the two rides I had strong cramps. Overall they feel weak and sore. During riding I felt I can’t hold even slightly higher power for long. I also get a stuffy nose when laying down so need to use spray to decongest it.

Any idea what’s going on with my leg’s? I am concerned that this is athrophy due to the weight loss. I am around 20% BF, so I had energy to spare.

2

You haven’t fully recovered

You have not repleted your glycogen stores.

Eat a ton, rest up, and don’t worry, you don’t catabolize muscle that fast.

/endthread

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3

Yea that’s what happens when you barely eat and sick for 2 days. I have had food poisoning before, was bed ridden for 3-4 days. It took me a week at the very least to get back to feeling “normal”.

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4

Probably also a lot of water loss, make sure you hydrate properly and add some electrolytes.

Nothing to worry about imo, recover fully, do a couple of days easy, and then get back to higher-intesity training

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5

Yeah if it takes 24+ hours for full nutritional recovery from a normal workout and carb-loading for a major race can be a 3-5 day affair then it seems completely normal that a complete depletion episode like that (alongside the damage of illness) could require a week or more of recovery before you’re fully back at baseline.

Stay consistent, train within your limits (as you’ve been doing with scaled-down IF), eat well, rest well, and be patient. I’d expect a week of feeling weak, a week of feeling not quite back to normal, and then possible PRs in week 3 or 4.

6

In addition to the above, I’ll add that you are probably also doing too much work. You noted that you went right back into your daily volume, albeit at a reduced intensity and then upped the volume.

My recommendation would be to do not more than 30’ at a reduced IF for the first few days. Your body just got wrecked. You need to give it time to recover but you are just digging a deeper hole.

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7

Thanks all! Looks you were right and it was just a matter of not yet being fully recovered. Today it was much better.
These cramps and weak legs freaked me out a bit, like I wasted the prior 3 months build in 2d :slight_smile:

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