Sluggish Recoveries?

[spokewench]

Expensive Cadence Meters, aside, new pedals aside; (not that you bike fit might be off or whatever since I don't know you and have never seen you ride); You need to train your weakness!

we all have them. whether its hills, small blips. a heart rate monitor might help you understand what your body is doing. But from what I am hearing, if you are coming into the blip at 18 mph and you are running out of steam at the top or before the top and then have to slow way down to recover, you are going over your lactate threshhold and you are having to reduce your workload to recover. So, even if you think you are not working that hard, it really sounds like you are pushing your limits coming into the blip and pushing past that threshold while on the blip causing you to blow!

[bcipam]

which is why in inexpensive heart rate montior would be helpful. You can get a Polar for $25. Well worth the investment.

[Dogmama]

which is why in inexpensive heart rate montior would be helpful. You can get a Polar for $25. Well worth the investment.

Ditto on the HRM - although I've never had good luck with Polar.

Are you overtrained? It sounds like you've been hitting it hard all season. When was your last week off?

When I'm overtrained, my recovery is the pits and difficult cycling really suffers. I take a week of easy cycling/more days off.

[Dianyla]

Don't forget to get your iron checked, too. Heavy exercise (especially endurance, but even just lots of shorter hard rides) can deplete iron stores. Even if you don't have full-blown anemia, just a subclinical "low iron" condition, you may still experience performance degradation, fatigue, inability to deliver enough oxygen to your muscles feeling out of breath, etc.