I’ve had this issue for a few years now. Different bikes, different stages of fitness, diets - including magnesium, electrolytes, salt pills, different shoes/insoles etc. Had a bike fit too which didn’t help.
The issue starts with twinges in each quad (typically both together or within minutes of each other - almost never just the one). It then becomes an outright cramp that if I don’t address it pretty much immediately - and by ‘address’, I typically need to get off the bike and stretch. Then it becomes a spasm in my inner thighs too (sartorius?) which is super painful and did have me screaming out loud, much to the concern of onlookers, once. This makes even getting off the bike difficult as my legs are in so much pain that unclipping and extending my legs are hard. Once I am off, the pain in the inner thighs relaxes a bit, but comes back if I keep riding. I did the Mallorca 225 a couple of years ago and this happened towards the end. I could still feel my inner thighs wanted to spasm and cramp on the flight home the following day…
Recently, a physio made a bit of a breakthrough. He had me do some tests and reckons I’m not engaging my core enough when pedalling, putting too much emphasis on my legs and hence simply burning them out. This seems to make a lot more sense as I’ve tried all the reasonable things mentioned elsewhere in this thread. So I’ve been working with him and paying more attention to my training, especially my core strength and stability to improve.
I thought I’d reply because this is the most informed discussion I’ve seen on the subject (ie hasn’t simplified it to ‘bike fit’ or ‘electrolytes’. I have the 158km around Flanders to do in a fortnight and am rather hoping that I don’t cramp as I so often do on the latter stages - it will make getting up the Paterberg about 90miles in all but impossible!
EDIT FOR UPDATE: No cramping in Flanders whatsoever. Paced the 158km steady, didn’t try to keep up with anyone and stopped at each of the 4 x feed stops (not because I needed to, but because they were there - wife was also waiting on me in Oudenaarde on her own, so gave me a chance to call her and see how she was doing!). Intensity Factor for the ride was 0.7 which is lower than I’d ordinarily do at home, so I’m now thinking the cramps in the past are either intensity related and/or nutrition/hydration related.
Long time cramper, but I could always trace it back to going slightly past my limit, which is disappointing in itself because it makes current fitness feel trapped.
But beyond that…
I had two rides last year that really discouraged me.
Last Summer, I took my relatively new gravel bike out on a group road ride. I have skipped this ride at times in the past because it is annoyingly easy. One hour of eeaasyy riding in, quads and then hamstrings locked up hard.
In the Fall, I rode this same bike in a gravel event. I started off decidedly easy, letting everyone go. After 1.5 hours of easy riding, quads and then hamstrings locked up tight.
These aren’t like I hear some people say where they start cramping up and they shake, stretch, and get better. I’m generally pretty tough, but these are debilitating. Both legs lock out hard and unusable.
I have tried for these months to mull over the variables, but unfortunately I haven’t had many chances to put much into action.
I have done two 3-hour MTB rides with some intensity and zero cramps.
I spend plenty of time on the trainer, usually sub-60 minutes, but I do some 60-120 trainer rides. Hard intervals. Gatorade and snacks. No cramps.
Both of these cramp rides were well-fueled before and during. Blood sugars were in range (type 1 diabetic). I really felt totally fine until the moment the cramps hit.
Questions:
-Could the two cramp rides have been too pre-fueled? I definitely ate more leading up to them than a normal trainer ride. Those two mornings, I had a double portion of oatmeal. The cramp-free MTB rides did not involve oatmeal, but probably a similar amount of carbs (I don’t remember what I ate those days). Trainer rides, MTB rides, and cramp rides are all done with Gatorade. People on the cramp rides were saying Gatorade was my problem, but it’s just fine for me on these other rides.
-Could it be the bike? I have my old road bike on the trainer and use this gravel bike out in the real world now. I haven’t done any bike fits (at least in the last 15 years or so), but I set up the gravel bike the way I’ve always set bikes up and it feels comfortable. It certainly doesn’t feel like anything that would obviously cause these cramps. Could it be the saddle itself? I hope to swap out with the saddle from another bike, but I haven’t gotten to do that and go for a ride, yet.
-I even think if it could be some of the medicines I take, or maybe something I should be taking, but I keep going back to trainer rides and those two MTB rides being just fine.
As far as I can come up with, the only differences in the two cramp rides were the big oatmeal breakfasts and the bike itself (or saddle). I’d obviously like to be doing some more testing of variables, but time is short and precious these days… There’s a gravel event I’d like to do soon, and I’m seriously considering just doing it on my MTB (2014 Fuel EX 9)
I generally subscribe to cramps being a fitness issue, but compounded by hydration. On the fitness side, my experience is that it’s not just about exceeding your typical effort. You might be plenty fit to push 4000kj’s on a given day without cramping, but might end up cramping after 2500kj’s if that effort has different dynamics compared to typical training. Many types of racing includes a lot more surging than you might see in training. I also find that my cadence is sometimes measurably higher when racing compared to training. All that translates to new/different types of stress than I haven’t seen as much of in training and can result in cramps even when I’m feeling fresh and riding way below typical NP limits. I’m sure I could do better trying to simulate those stresses in training, but it can be hard to replicate race efforts. It’s one of the reasons I like to do as many B/C races as possible when leading into my target races.
You’re right about it being a fitness issue more so than any other but I think each athlete experiences a blend of contributing factors that ultimately result in what can even be called different kinds of cramping.
You’re right about the fitness (what I would call more specifically the endurance axis) which is just the idea that the muscles need to be sufficiently conditioned to support the work, as a thought experiment a rider that was able to drink a magic potion to suddenly give them hematocrit of lance armstrong and amazing blood vector delivery of oxygen, well they could likely do a PR but just as likely is that they would burn the tires right off the car going way harder than their body can handle at that time and cause cramping, central factors exceeds conditioning/endurance.
This effect also exists with sugar consumption when guys don’t practice as much doing rides at race pace and consuming sugar to survive as in the later stages of a race, for the most part they are actually doing a kind of drawn out PR that their central adaptations can support in the presence of glucose but that their muscles can barely or perhaps cannot support.
The same thing can be true with too much of a taper, taper + fueling can bring up form up to the point at which it is possible to do a PR that is outside of the conditioning of the muscles at that time.
Finally there is a CNS axis which I think plays a bigger role in the cramping specifically in races, my understanding is that when the signal to the muscles is so repetitive eventually the CNS starts to take shortcuts on the contract relax patterning and lo and behold you suddenly stop pedaling and the hamstring shoots on contracting in a way that might have made sense in a pedal stroke but not when free wheeling.
Fixing the other big ones is a combination of racing more and training without stops and with enough kJ surges calories consumed and taper so that the body can build endurance under these conditions… The cafe always calls to the group after 2.5h and there is a reason races usually last around 3.5h being conscious of this and bringing enough fuel to ride it out is important.
Finally for the CNS stuff, one trick that I have tried and found works is to actually take packets of vinegar during periods of cramping supposedly this taste shocks the CNS and helps shake it out of that pattern of constantly firing the muscles as a shortcut to firing on demand.
Yep, vinegar, pickle juice, mustard packets, etc. will all interrupt the pattern for me, but it’s usually a very temporary fix. Sometimes that’s enough though if it’s a last hard push.
There’s a gravel event I’d like to do soon, and I’m seriously considering just doing it on my MTB (2014 Fuel EX 9) 