How do other people deal with the fatigue you get after a Zwift race or 2 hour Tempo on the turbo type of level workout. I don’t mind the hard workouts but by the afternoon I’m often feeling terrible, slight headache. I’m pretty sure I’m fueling well, 70 grams of carbs an hour and some after. I’m usually recovered fine by the next day and I don’t have built up fatigue. I think when I was younger and racing I still felt like that after races but now at 45 with a family it’s more of an issue…
I don’t have an answer, but if this were happening to me I would ask myself these things and if I don’t know the answer I would make notes and adjust/experiment.
FTP accurate…maybe a little high?
Non-training stress?
Hydration? (this has been the issue for me in the past after the session, staying properly hydrated)
Electrolytes?
Specific pre-ride fuel…changed recently, needs to change?
Specific ride fuel…changed recently, needs to change?
Specific post-workout recovery food/drink…changed recently, needs to change?
Food/drink choices off the bike
Sleep
Workout time
Using caffeine, timing of it?
So many possible things…I hope you find a few answers and the recovery/fatigue becomes more manageable.
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Doesn’t everyone feel this way? 
I used to be trashed after a hard group ride, so much so that I was useless the rest of the day. Since focusing more on structured training that is less of an issue. I think it’s probably a combination of being fitter, fueling, and probably reducing the amount of times I cross the red-line. If you’re doing a lot of racing, you probably are going anaerobic quite a bit. Perhaps that taxes your systems exponentially more. I’d be surprised if the 2hour tempo ride did it by itself.
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by trial and error I’ve reduced fatigue by:
- eat about 2-3 hours before
- during eat about 50% of calories burned on the bike (versus drinking the calories)
- post-ride eating a burrito (or equivalent) within 30 minutes
- drink a coffee after the burrito
- keep hydrating after the meal
Increasing food intake from 25% to 50% of calories burned helped the most. Sometimes I need another coffee about 3-4 hours later, especially if I’m tagging along on a “hey stay off your phone and give us your opinion” boring shopping trip.
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+1 to everything here. spot on
If you are having headaches that are consistently related to doing workouts, that might indicate an acute hydration or nutrition issue
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Yes, I’m pretty on it with Electrolytes, it’s more 3 or 4 hours after. I don’t know what normal is and how I should feel. I’ll try upping calories on the bike. I do about 60g carbs an hour at the moment. Always hard balancing bike fatigue with just living your life. I remember I think it was one of the guys on the podcast talking about the Home depot test which is, after training do you still have the energy to go to Home Depot and do things around the house.
I would say go to 100 or more. You may only be able to process 100, but should at least shoot for that.
I’ll try it.
Can the rest of you do a 100TSS ride and feel fine the rest of the day?
My latest go to is a bottle of tailwind (2 scoops), plus 2 gels, and nibbling on a banana per hour.
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Is there an option to NOT take care of things around the house after a ride? 
Post-ride notes from a Sunday ride two weeks ago, after struggling with unusually high RPE:
Thought about it and realized yesterday I didn’t properly carb up after the workout. Instead I rode 3 hours, ate half calories/carbs on the ride, and then came home and immediately worked in the yard for 2 hours on just a post-ride banana. Then another 1.5 hours before getting food and they screwed up the burrito order and left out the rice and beans.
Live and learn.
My Home Depot or Costco test is “did I have to fight the urge to sit in the car and take a nap?”
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I had Mary Austin -1 and Tallac +3 plus some additional cool down work Saturday and Sunday. Was about 300 TSS altogether. I’d say I’m a little more sluggish than normal, but not so much I couldn’t go out in the “forest” with my 4 year old, go for a walk, cook dinner, clean up, and other normal things.
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All depends on what your normal training load looks like…I can knock out a 100TSS ride with no residual side effects later in the day. But I am also carrying a high 80’s CTL right now and doing 600-700+ TSS weeks.
Did a 200TSS ride on Saturday that was pretty tough…75 “mile” group ride on Zwift, riding near the front (and not fueling enough). I was a bit knackered later in the day by the effort.
But I have built up to the point where a 100TSS day is a pretty “normal” workout day for me…all depends on what your work load is like / has been to say if 100TSS is “hard” or not.
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I can get out and walk and be o.k. but still definitely feel tired and a bit headachy especially in the afternoon… My wife goes out, does a 20 minute run, comes back does some Yoga and feels great for the rest of the day… Weekday 60TSS a day is fine with me but the bigger weekend rides do leave me feeling depleted. Maybe it’s just part of the sacrifice. I’m going to try going higher on the carbs and see if that helps.
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Yes, totally, I only ride hard over threshold once a week, the rest being zone 2 but that ride does take some recovery for the rest of the day. I guess hitting your max just has a cost…
Same here, I’m just knocking down ~550 TSS loading weeks and here is this weekend’s two day block:
and that was a recovery/adaptation/rest week. Its still base season so those are mostly zone2.
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Two months ago I would have thought these weeks would have been impossible for me to do. However, they weren’t too bad as I just fueled with 100+g/hr on the bike and made sure to eat properly before and after. Sure there’s fatigue, but nothing that really affects my day. It’s the gradual build up to weeks like this that make them attainable.
EDIT: Tallac +4 was pretty tough though and I did feel that one.
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Very interesting, I wasn’t so big on eating tonnes of carbs but got benefits from hitting 60g an hour so I’ll try going all the way to 100g an hour and see what happens.
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like stated above, the biggest difference for me was switching from carbs in the bottle to real food.
I just checked my files and I did 2 hours at an IF of 0.74 on Saturday and IF of 0.92 on the Sunday for an hour.
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