Morning workouts leaving me depleted and exhausted for rest of day

This. Not only morning workouts for me. After I have settled down and hit the shower somewhere around 1-2 hours post ride I just feel like sleeping. I am in sweet spot base still and the 60 minute rides will have me feeling pretty tired. The 90 minute ones have me feeling dead. Just no energy the rest of the day. This does not happen with 30-60 minute Z2 rides.

Best I have figured out is to take in food after my ride, have a daily multivitamin, water, and two cups of coffee (approx 20oz.). If it is the weekend a nap does wonders though, even if it is only 20-30 minutes. 1-1.5 hours is preferred.

Sleep will not deplete your glycogen stores nor will all the excess calories be converted into fat. What and how much you eat the night before will have a great effect on your training.

Moreover, you don’t need to eat anything for breakfast to make it through a 60-90 minute workout. I think most of the people who exercise in the morning (as I do during the week) do not eat anything before training — we simply don’t have the time to. One single breakfast (e. g. with the family) after your workout is more than enough.

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Sleep uses energy, what do you think happens to excess that cannot be stored in muscles and liver, and are you refuting or supporting the main point of my post?

I am refuting two points, namely (1) that the OP is eating plenty (his medical test results prove you wrong) and (2) that “any excess will be converted to fat while you sleep.”

Your second sentence could be ambiguous, when I replied I read it as “everything that is beyond the energy expended while sleeping.” That is certainly false, for otherwise, carb loading wouldn’t work.

If you meant instead “anything after your glycogen stores are filled”, then I agree. However, it is clear from the OP’s post that his glycogen stores are far from being filled (again, confirmed by the OP’s test results).

What you eat the night before a workout has profound impact on the workout, especially if you haven’t eaten prior to the workout. If the OP had posted that he is also eating plenty the night before and has tried something more carb heavy, I’d say, yeah, go and see a doctor again. But right now I’d suggest to alter his dinner habits first and then see if there are any changes.

Naps rule
The only morning workouts I do are strength work as my watt bike is too noisy. But sometimes training catches up with me. I find a quiet room at work, at lunch time and set my alarm for 20 mins.
We have big soft cushions…
I have heard that if you have a coffee before the nap it has started working by the time the 20 min alarm goes off so you wake up refreshed. So you could save one of your coffees for then ? But then you’re having coffee with lunch nutrition intake :scream:

Then we agree on that point.

This is where we disagree then. You’re over emphasising the importance of last nights dinner.

He is not complaining that he struggles to train, he described eating plenty before the ride, he describes fuelling plenty during the ride.

The medical tests indicate that something else is at work.

But there is no need for us to agree on this :slightly_smiling_face:

From his description, @jheg is eating slowly releasing carbohydrates, and I suspect the time window between breakfast and training is too small form them to have a positive impact. That is because the nutrients may not have been absorbed. Porridge is great for longer rides, because of the slowly releasing carbohydrates. That works in your favor on longer rides, but against you if you need the energy now. Moreover, the body takes energy to digest, so eating too closely to a hard workout may actually be counterproductive.

Hence my suggestion to skip a complete breakfast, have a coffee and something like a banana or a gel before and change what he has for dinner the day before.

I’m not a medical doctor, so I would be very cautious in interpreting the test results. And unless you are an MD, I’d be cautious, too.

I just take @jheg at his word when he said his blood glucose levels were low to very low in two separate tests. That means he does not have enough glucose in his body for hard workouts. I am further assuming that this means the OP already is in good medical care and if there were something obvious going on that he had been diagnosed already. Clearly, if the symptoms do not subside, he should further consult a physician. But I do not see how trying to alter his diet isn’t worth a try.

Banana is good idea for a cheap fuelling and nice to absorb solution. I could never in a million years down porridge and get on the trainer, but then again perhaps I suck for this reason!

He;s not having a problem during training - it’s after training, when the body will have had plenty of time to digest both the breakfast and all the fuel he consumes during the ride.

Who is interpreting results? You are saying they mean he’s not eating enough the night before. I am saying that I don’t know what they mean.

The only difference between your opinion and mine is that you think there is enough to conclude that there is something wrong with his previous evening meal, and I don’t.

Again, I don’t think we need to agree.

your blood sugar will go down slowly until the new food is absorbed

I re-read my posts, and I think this is a misrepresentation of my position. @jheg only detailed what he ate for breakfast, but didn’t mention dinner. I saw that as an indication that perhaps he wasn’t including dinner in his considerations. And indeed, the OP wrote in a reply that he did not think about the impact of dinner the night before. The other point was about his breakfast: given the timing, I still think that he could also experiment and just postpone breakfast until after training. When I eat too close to a workout, my RPEs go up and I feel more exhausted than I otherwise would. Of course, I’m not claiming these are the only factors, but I think they are reasonable avenue to pursue. Probably there is more than one factor at play.

Perhaps I should have included a caveat along the lines of “under the assumption that there is no underlying medical condition”, but I thought that was clear from the context. This forum is not the place for medical advice, and since @jheg already went to see the doctor, I am sure he would have mentioned if he was diagnosed with a pertinent medical condition.

If your point is that the OP should get further medical tests done, sure, that’s another reasonable piece of advice given the information we have.

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Agreed :+1:

And of course I could be wrong. There is the chance that there is a significant gap in his evening meal and/or that the morning ride is so draining that the breakfast and fuelling isn’t covering the energy expenditure, leaving him quite naturally low. :+1:

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