First gran fondo...all the cramps

Wow, thanks for the in-depth analysis. Honestly I didn’t even know what I was looking at when I was reviewing the ride data. When comparing with your ride, I can see the huge difference as far as power consistency is concerned. I can see that my inconsistency likely contributed to my cramping.

It’ll feel silly at times when you don’t just jump up and hammer across every short rise - but it helps you keep going for a long time at a solid pace.

Yeah this is true. I think by nature I have more snap than staying power, so while it felt like I was taking it easy I was really burning matches with those snaps. The only times I was holding someone’s wheel was when I wasn’t pedaling, otherwise I was snapping to pass or catching up. I feel like my workouts are like this too. For example, in a 3 minute VO2max interval I’ll smash for 15 seconds then slightly back off then smash again.

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A couple things I noticed from your profile

Your average weekly TSS was 362 the week of your event. You did 360 TSS in your single day event. This is a huge outlier based on your prior few weeks and months - doesn’t really speak to you cramping after doing roughly 190 TSS of work in the first 50 miles though

Your ride to the first stop had a huge VI - 220 NP and 150 AP. your ride to the second stop was better - but shows you were already leaking oil - 194 NP and 149 AP. Your third section was a better metered effort but was your hardest yet - 214 NP and 180 AP.

The only ride in the preceding weeks that comes close to these is the ride on Sept 4th where you had roughly similar efforts, albeit slightly easier.

None of this really explains why the cramping - that might remain a bit of a mystery. I do think you should work towards bringing steadier efforts, particularly for rides of this duration. Also mimicking the pacing you’ve succeeded at on 50 mile rides is unlikely to be successful when you expand it to a much longer distance like this - go easy early so you can finish strong

I’ve pasted some stats from two rides I did this weekend (7:30 and 6:30 in moving time respectively). First one is from 90 minutes that took place from hour 3-4:30, second is the day after and around the middle of the ride

image

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If you can get your NP and AP to be closer together and not follow every surge in the group and surge in the terrain you’ll have a much better experience, particularly in longer rides

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if it was hot out, I’d definitely point to the fact that you doubled your longest previous distance with a great amount of climbing! That’s just the muscles, not the sodium.

If you are a very salty sweater, you probably aren’t intaking enough sodium. Do you know how much per hour?

Brendan

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Thank you for your advice and input! I thought about another issue I may have, I figured I could power up hills and then recover on the way down. But in reality, that’s not how our bodies work is it? For example, if we do tank-emptying all-out 30s sprint efforts we need more than just 30 seconds to recover. So why would I be fully recovered coasting down a hill after going up it at threshold or above?

I don’t know how much salt I lose, unfortunately, I just know my jersey has some clear salt patches on it after a while. That being said, I pee’d very little during the whole GF but didn’t feel too dehydrated.

sorry, do you know how much salt you consumed per hour?

gatorade may not have enough to help you replenish, and maybe the pickle juice was too late?

just thinking out loud

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@brendanhousler - I recall you had a nice post that got into this topic of stable power for endurance rides that I once stumbled onto on your blog - thought it might also be a good read for this thread. (and nice blog, BTW)

To the OP - you also said:

I figured I could power up hills and then recover on the way down.

This is where the TSS models help illustrate the problem - on a per-minute basis, you are accumulating stress non-linearly as you get up near/above FTP. Each minute hammering at 2X your FTP is WAY harder on you than spending that time in tempo/SS, and eventually the bill comes due.

I’ll tell one other anecdote - a friend who hates road riding went out with me and we did this kind of super-controlled power pacing. It ended up being a PR in distance for him and an absolute minimum of whining compared to normal - he felt SO much better at the end. Granted, many group ride situations will dictate the pace to you, but big fondos/endurance/charity rides give you a lot more opportunity to mesh your best realistic pace with the best nearby groups to work with. (unless you are the very pointy end that truly has a chance to “win” and must hold on to the leaders!)

finally, as an example of even more extremely anal retentive pacing… 3 hrs with avg 217, NP 220 - this not surprisingly led to my best 3 hr power yet.

https://www.trainerroad.com/career/colinbrodsky/rides/60533644-215w-for-over-3-hrs-all-time-power-pr-

The only caveat becomes that for best time (rather than maximum average power or specific training focus) you can benefit from a little more effort up the hills and coast on some downhills - within careful limits as the event gets longer.

These rides are a totally different way to ride, but they might match your strong indoor trainer SS fitness a lot more than what you’ve been doing. Better pacing alone might not have completely taken you to 100 miles with zero pain on your first attempt, but I’d be really surprised if you couldn’t go do at least a well paced 70-80 miles tomorrow with no problems given how your indoor rides look.

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I probably only consumed 2,000 mg of salt in the first 3 hours of the ride and 1,000 mg in the next 3 hours.

Thanks again for the link and your comments!

I was wondering about my training leading up to the GF myself, I was in the middle of the short-power build phase which has a lot of high-effort VO2max workouts.


Here is Podcast from Velonews on the myths of Cramping. I found it very interesting

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If your hamstrings and quads are cramping before your calves I’d wonder if your seat is a little low, try raising it a few mm and see if that helps?

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Thanks for the suggestion, I’ll see if this helps.

thank you sir!

Big update to this issue, hoping to get some advice on this weird one.

Since the GF the soreness has gone away but I’ve been having stiffness behind my right knee, it’s been 6 days since the GC and it’s just starting to loosen up a bit with regular stretching; I try to straighten my right leg with my toes pointing up.

I decided to hop on the trainer today and see if I could loosen things up a bit more. The first 5 minutes were pretty tough, knee felt very tight and I was struggling to get my cadence over 85. The cadence, btw was a big issue during the whole GF.

@jeremybnz had suggested I raise my seat a few mm and see what it did for me. I didn’t think this was going to help because pain behind the knee and IT band pain is usually indicative of the seat being too high, or at least this is what I’ve read. I figured I’d try it anyway and raised the seat by about 5mm, got back on and I was immediately spinning faster and with more ease and I felt my knee relaxing a bit more. After a few more minutes I got off and raised the seat by 5mm more, felt even better and did a little effort at 75% for a few minutes. I was able to spin up to 183rpm without any pain or issues, no bouncing on the saddle either.

It then occurred to me that I may have screwed myself on this GF. A couple days prior I brought my bike to a trusted LBS to checkover before I took it on the ride. The night before the ride I was going over the bike and noticed the saddle was super low, apparently the LBS had taken out my seat post to check on something and had inserted it back into the frame virtually all the way. I blame myself because I didn’t have something to show how far the seat post should’ve been inserted. I didn’t remember where my saddle height was so I just brought it up to what I thought it was before; all evidence points to it being way too low still.

If you have thoughts on whether the saddle height could have contributed to my pain, or if you just want to leave a comment on how foolish it was for me to not note my saddle height beforehand, please feel free to do so. I’ve since raised my saddle by 10mm after this recent test and my knee feels good.

Yes. You don’t have the “fitness” for what you are asking your body to do. Happens to the best in the world. Sorry not what you want to read…keep at it! Just keep riding.

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Don’t blame yourself - any mechanic worth his salt would’ve marked it and put it back exactly where it was. They literally take bikes apart and put them back together for their living - if they don’t have their own trick to put them back the way they started they are not good at their jobs

Yes - a misadjusted position on the bike can lead to cramping and lots of other problems. Basically you’ve trained your muscles to fire in a certain position and if you’re going very deep in a different position it adds strain to the effort that, while not hugely problematic, will increase the stress to the muscles and joints

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Wow, thats awesome news!!

Wow. This turned into a really informative thread! Thanks for being willing to share and learn. This will help many others too!

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