So I’m having real difficulties sleeping after long hard cycles. Today had a 100km ride at 0.91IF (Per Strava) and I will have severe difficulties sleeping tonight.
My Garmin watch is even telling me that I have low stress of 35 some 6 hours after finishing, normally I am between 8 & 16 in the evening.
Any suggestions as to what I can do to prevent this? Anyone else have this problem? What do you do?
Sounds like a rough ride, it sounds spiky with such a high IF for some long.
How long do you finish your ride before you sleep?
What’s your nutrition routine like after the ride, how much carbs and protein do you get in?
Yes, it was pretty tough. I normally finish early afternoon (1330) and then sleep 2300 but today was a bit later. I rewarded myself with a decent steak and beer post ride. On the ride I probably had about 1500/1600 calories.
Sounds like your overtraining Symptoms of overtraining for cyclists – Struggle Events. The link suggests some ways to prevent it. I’ll occasionally suffer from the symptoms my self. 
Ride easier. If that’s all to spec, 3 hours at 0.91 IF is very challenging.
Do a long(er) cool down? I used to be a gym rat years ago, and could do a full set, come home, and crash like a baby. It seems harder as I’ve gotten older, but if I ‘do it right’, I can still wind down and sleep well. Other times I’ve missed it and never get to anything close to a deep sleep. Away rides always seem to be harder to manage for some reason, for me.
Yeah, over training seems like a good diagnosis. I wonder if doing a more extended cool down would help wipe it out.
Try not drinking the beer. What are you doing between 1330 and 2300?
Its just the one… I was loafing on the sofa 
Normally I’d take my daughters swimming, which I would think would help ‘wind me down’
It sounds like I generally need to do shorter / lower intensity rides until I’m fitter, and try and do them earlier in the day.
Think of it more as the variance from your typical daily energy expenditure
If you’re regularly training at X every day and then do 5X on Saturday your body is going to have a lot more to deal with and will likely struggle with calorie processing, recovery, any number of things
There’s a number of ways to improve your ability to do a ‘big’ weekend ride and then quickly recover, but viewing them through the lense above might help
A number of factors are at play here. After a big ride, your sympathetic nervous system is pumped and you’re still in a high-cortisol “fight or flight” state. You may also believe to your core that you don’t sleep after big rides, and this association can be hard to break. You need to develop a little routine that will help you switch into “rest and relax” mode. For me this is:
Some other supplements you can try:
10 drops of Valerian tincture in water before bed, or even better mixed into a chamomile tea.
Melatonin
5g creatine the morning after a “bad” night will mitigate cognitive blurriness - and the knowledge of this can be reassuring and help you not dread a bad night, which should relax you further.
Really the most effective thing for me has been the acceptance part. Yes, it’s rubbish to feel like you haven’t recovered at all and it’s frustrating that this then has a knock-on effect the next day. But, it’s done, try to separate your feelings about it from the events. In time this will lead you to feel more relaxed about it all generally.
In the summer, I make sure to have a long cold shower before bed as lowering body temperature can help lower cortisol and makes you actually want to “snuggle” in bed which is very comforting.
Good luck!
I think it’s just insisting that your body is recovering from the ride, it’s not something to be avoided. If you think the ride is too hard, choose an easier group to ride with.
Try to prep either side of the ride and for bed. Eat and drink after the ride, have your last meal of the day a few hours before bedtime. Go to bed fairly early and don’t worry about being restless or waking up. You’re still resting. 
No beer!!! Let’s not get hasty…
But drinking right before bed is a recipe for sketchy sleep, at least for me. Depends on the beer, but yeah…
I like to drink. But one beer (or other drink) screws up my sleep badly. I only drink if I know I’m going to have a rest day (or at least a very easy day) the next day. Even one beer. Each person is different, but I think OP should see if not drinking the one beer (and maybe instead focuses on lots of delicious food after the ride) makes a difference.
Or go NA. There are some pretty goon NA brews these days. 
I think most of the big ones have been covered, but a few little things that help me (I’m fairly temperamental sleep-wise after a harder effort);
It is TOTALLY normal to have sleep disturbance after an effort that is well above what you can truly handle, especially if training load has been generally high for a long time without recovery days / weeks. IE, end of a training block, where you are riding the line of overreaching.
I like to go into these big days without a lot of residual fatigue, always plan in a rest day after, and ONLY do them when the next day I can afford to sleep as late as I want and don’t have to be up at a specific time for work or family stuff. If you are fresh enough you can sometimes get away with doing a massive ride and still sleep fine, but if you have a lot of residual fatigue or are riding that fine line between being overreached and making great power, you can easily set yourself up for a terrible night of sleep and anxiety.
Some people are much more susceptible to this than others as well. Folks that have a lot of neuromuscular power and/or anaerobic capacity seem to be in this camp. The riders with massive aerobic engines and low peak power seem to have less issues with this.
Nutrition wise, staying on top of fueling during the ride seems to help a lot. Keep those glycogen stores topped off, it pays off immensely on the recovery side. Whey protein post ride also helps speed the recovery process too.
I also do several deep breaths, and hold for 5 to 10 seconds, and if that doesn’t work, I will try to stretch myself out on the bed, just trying to inch myself ‘longer’, if that makes sense. Usually, I’m out like a that.
Personally too, I find if I have a large amount of caffeine past noon to 1-sh, depending on how much, I either can’t get to sleep, or can’t stay asleep, or seem to get to that deep sleep stage. Usually the next day I’m stoned from not getting enough of whatever I needed the night before. A noon-time nap often brings things back in focus, if I can get one in.
This helps me a ton, i have a book at my bedside and if i pick it up instead of my phone I’ll be dozing off in 10 minutes.
Don’t ride so hard for 100km?
Seriously, that’s normal after particularly hard workouts and/or blocks of overreaching.
Negro Modello… beautiful light lager 
I don’t drink much, but Negro is really fantastic.
I think this is really it. I end up ‘wired’ wide awake and can’t wind down. Doesn’t help that my stress levels are very high at work at the moment as well. I should probably dial down either length or intensity for these rides especially when my stress levels are elevated such as now.
This is me exactly, much bigger sprint / anaerobic compared to my aerobic capabilities.