Bit of a first for me today - basically bonked during a workout.
And it wasn’t even a hard workout - it was Pettit, which is one of the easiest workouts TR has; basically an hour at 65% of FTP. I’ve done this workout practically in my sleep. But today I bonked pretty hard about 20 minutes in.
Hard to believe I could have been under-fueled for such an easy workout, but just in case here is what my day looked like. Anyone have any experience with sudden bonking on easy workouts??
Breakfast (7am): Slice of toast with butter, lettuce, tomato and diced ham with olive oil/salt, coffee.
about 90% of the times I have run low on sugar, started shaking, could not ride anymore… it has been during an easy workout. My theory is my body was not used to needing to burn fat for fuel so during very easy workouts I would fail. But with the same nutrition on very hard workouts, I’d excel. I wonder what others have experienced in this regard.
There’s plenty of room for guessing here but since you asked
I’d wager it most likely has nothing to do with that day at all. Cumulative training load, in it’s various and many forms might have caught up with you, this could have been in conjunction with some type of illness or bug coming on as well.
My other thought is that you did what you described as an easy run in the morning and then wanted to do an easy ride in the afternoon. I’ll take that as your plan called for or you felt that it was a day to dial it back a bit. If it was an easy or rest day maybe one workout or no workout would have been plenty.
I know I am certainly guilty of my easy days not being easy enough until it catches up with me and I’m stuck being pretty tired.
Review what you have done in training and nutrition for the past 3-5 days. A bonk on an easy workout is a cumulative effect. It is about how much fuel you have used, how much you have taken in, total work accumulated, hydration and electrolytes. Normally, I feel a bonk coming on in my brain before I feel it in my body. My cognition will change which tells me I have missed on my fueling.
Ha! I trust my wife’s cooking
(And I suspect I’d know if I had food poisoning…)
My schedule this week:
Sunday: 6km (35mn) light run in the morning, Leavitt +2 (90mn) 96 TSs in evening
Monday: OFF
Tuesday: RAMP test, 43 TSS
Wednesday: Geiger (1hr, 72 TSS)
Thursday: 7k run (50mn) in the morning, Antelope (90mn, 104 TSS) in late afternoon
Friday: 5km (30mn) light run in morning, Pettit in late afternoon (bonk)
It’s literally one of the easiest weeks I’ve had in months.
My normal routine is a ramp up of weekly TSS from around 550 to 750 or so over three-four weeks followed by a rest week. This week’s schedule was for a pretty typical 550 TSS week.
I’m reviving this old post. Yesterday I experienced an exact similar situation. My mind was truely boggled. After 20 minutes of easy riding I had the following symptoms:
Heavy legs fatigue
Increased hunger
Weakness
Sweating
Light-headedness
Chills
I was on my 2nd day of my recovery week and about 48 hours after my last ride of a 3 week training block. For reference this last ride was a 3:15 hour fast paced group ride of 234 TSS with a 30 minute coffee break midway. I had one of my best rides to date. I felt like I had endless power, largely contributed by finally nailing my carb intake during the ride. I managed to stay on top of fueling with about 120g carbs per hour with no related stomach issues. Post recovery was also on point in terms of both nutrition and sleep. Calendar is open for anyone interested in previous training history.
Back to the story. I end up finishing work a little earlier than expected and decided to complete my Cumberland -3 1:15 Endurance workout outside before dinner. This is very unusual for me. I either do my 1-1:30 hour endurance rides in a fasted state or properly fuled. At this point it was about 4 hours since lunch, but I had a large and healthy carb heavy breakfast and lunch, so I decided to ride on an “almost” empty stomach. Almost, because while gearing up I had a banana. For reference my hydration during the whole day was also on point.
I managed to finish the ride and started treating my described symptoms with quick carbs. My initial thought was that I bonked but there is no way I could have emptied my glucogen stores so fast.
I was also able to continue riding, I just felt awful. Ruling out dehydration as well I realized I probably experienced a massive blood sugar crash, also described as reactive hypogycemia.
My best guess is this condition was triggered by the simple carbs from the banana on an empty stomach. To the best of my knowledge I have no underlying conditions and Im not diabetic.
During the past 6 months I’ve not had any failed workouts or carried any noticable fatique to the next workout. I’ve been extremely focused on recovery between workouts and full recovery weeks. Im doing a modified low volume plan with extra added endurance rides.
I was very surprised to get an alert about this thread from four years ago .
I can’t help much other than to say I had a very very similar experience about two years ago, albeit in the middle of a harder (but not ‘hard’) workout. The only common thing I could see was that both times, it was the week after the rest week. /shrug/ I have no idea if that is meaningful or not.
Cant help much either other than to say most times I’ve experienced something like this or feeling like I’ve got really low blood sugar it’s during an easy workout in the afternoon or evening.
95% of my workouts are at 5am, and very often fasted and I don’t experience the same symptoms so I have no idea what causes it on those random afternoon workouts. Perhaps the timing from lunch / the last thing I had to eat before the afternoon workout isn’t quite right
I tried to replicate the entire day in terms of nutrition, time of day of workout and the same workout/heart rate. The only difference was avoiding any food directly before the evening workout. As expected I completed the workout without any issues at all. A massive difference compared to being completely drained of energy after 20 minutes the other day.
