I thought I would ask a question in the forum that has been bugging me and see what turns up …
Whenever going on a long ride 2-4hours, and having a stop at the coffee shop, I get the wobbles when starting again … Just feeling really weak, like a sugar low…
If I keep riding, it just disappears in about 20-40mins, and then I’m back to feeling too normal and fine again. Allways happens, after stopping - drink coke, eat jelly babies - still feel bollack$
I have the same issue, sometimes feels like i’m halfway wasted. I think it’s because you stop, your body starts restoring you back to baseline which includes dealing with the previously plentiful blood glycogen, etc
I can’t find the link but there is a discussion about this on the TR forum. In that discussion someone suggested throwing in a max max effort sprint or two. It sounds counter intuitive, but it works for me. The wooziness is slapped out of the system by a couple of max effort short sprints.
It’s quite likely that even if we have had a slice of our favourite cake blood sugar levels will be a little low when we jump back on the bike. It’s quite likely (especially if we have been going hard) that, before the coffee stop we used up a lot of the glycogen stored in our muscles. After eating carbohydrates, we produce insulin, this is all part of the recovery process that allows us to replenish our glycogen stores.
However, when we restart cycling, due to the low muscle glycogen levels and high insulin levels, the muscles up-take more glucose from the blood than the body is ready for. The net effect of this is that blood sugar levels drop slight – this is what nutritionists call hypoglycaemia. It takes a little time for the body to release glycogen stored in the liver into the blood stream and return to the levels they were at during prior exercise.
Combine these two factors – oxygen delivery that isn’t yet quite up to speed, a reliance on burning more carbohydrates than usual, and a small drop in blood glucose, and you can see why your body (and legs!) might not like it.
Report back if you’ve found a way out of it. I’ve tried eating, not eating, caffeine, everything. Doesn’t seem to matter. The ride back from most of my group rides is around 25 minutes and right at the end I usually start to feel less dulled. Only the couple of sprints works.
Maybe try eating a gel 15-30m minutes before your cafe stop, while you’re still riding? That way your blood glucose isn’t low when you stop and then insulin spiking so hard after you get going again (I’m totally speculating on whether your BG wouldn’t spike as bad, just thinking maybe it would soften the rebound).