I do not have access to a stationary trainer now and ride outside. Due to my schedule I usually go cycling quite late. I noticed some changes in how my body perceives the load. Some time ago I came back and felt tired and sleepy. Then I had dinner and went to bed in a couple of hours. My sleep was quite bad and I often saw nightmares. The next day I had something similar to hangover. Is this expected?
It looks like something has changed. Now I come back and even though my muscles hurt a lot, I do not feel sleepy, instead I feel energized, cannot sleep and stay awake quite late.
I wouldn’t expect that. Probably, you should give more attention to post ride hydration. I usually make sure to consume a liter of fluid after an afternoon cycling workout. Whether it’s indoors our outdoors.
This helps recovery & sleep a lot. At least for me.
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I often feel energised if I do hard efforts too late in the day. But usually that needs to be quite late, like the Zwift racing league ones in the winter which are usually an hour full gas starting around 8pm. Try to go to bed but my legs are humming and I’m buzzing - takes me a couple of hours to wind down and I have weird dreams. I would not say I feel hungover, but I guess it’s not necessarily miles away from that in some cases. Late afternoon isn’t usually an issue.
But yes it takes me a couple of hours to wind down. Only advice I can give is to try and do the harder efforts earlier if possible, and if you have to workout too close to bed pick something easier if you can. Drink plenty of fluids and try to cool your body down after the workout.
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Yes, you are probably right. It just came to my mind that one cause of hangover is the fact that alcohol traps water causing dehydration.
After a hard afternoon session I experience excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (epoc) otherwise known as “the afterburn effect.” After a particularly hard HIIT session I can still “feel the burn” well into the night when I’m supposed to be sleeping.
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