My 3x or 4x weekly workout is mainly exercycling for 60 minutes, in which time I burn up 1200-odd calories. (I don’t much care if the machine-reading is high or low, but when it says 1200, I figure I’ve had an okay workout.) Usually, I get there and I’m not terribly winded, just sweaty and pleasantly tired after the hour.
But sometimes I can’t get through 10 minutes, and I can’t ever get my pace close to 20 calories per minute. My heart is beating like there’s a machinegun being fired inside my chest, it’s all I can do to breate adequately, and I can’t imagine where I find the strength to meet my usual standards of exercise. Often this state persists for a few days, sometime a week, and then suddenly I can do 1200 calories like it was nothing. Today I got up to 1260 easily–if I’d pushed it hard I probably could have broken the 1300 barrier. Last week I couldn’t break 1000 if my life depended on it.
There is no constant factor that I’ve noticed, other than it’s harder to exercise later in the day, and that I get my heart racing after a few cups of coffee, which I’ve been cutting back on.
My theories range from
I’ve got a serious undiagnosed heart condition (I’ve had several thorough heart exams in the last few years, and they all tell me I’m fine, just need to lose some weight, which is why I ride the bike for 3-4 hours per week)
My bike has some glitch that makes it harder to pedal at certain times
I’m overdoing the bike regimen, and this is my body’s way of saying “Cut down.”
this is normal, and I’m fussing about nothing. Some days are just easier than others
I’ve posted about this before, but now it’s getting more extreme–about once a month, I have these periods where I can’t get any exercise at all, and it’s becoming hard to maintain a regimen if I take too much time off. And now that I’m about to stop my normal work for a semester, I’ll have more time to exercise regularly, if I can figure out what the hell is going on.
Are you using your own exercise bike in your home, or one at a gym? I ask because if it’s at the gym, a previous user may have had it at a setting that’s higher than what you’re used to, and it’s still on that setting when you begin using it.
I try to run between 6 and 10 miles after work, skipping days between particularly long runs (e.g. 6, 10, skip, 6, 8).
Some days I feel full of vigor and I run 12 miles after work. Other days I come in, even after resting the same amount of time, and I feel totally whipped after four miles and I shut the machine off.
The annoying part is that I never know how far I will be able to go. I tell my wife I won’t be back for a couple of hours and then find out I can’t get past 4 mi and come home early. Other times I feel so energetic I run 12 or more miles.
I have found little correlation between crappy runs and what I ate or how hydrated I was. I suppose that if I was totally dehydrated or if I ate something really bad that might be noticeable, but I still haven’t identified what is going on here.
Sundays are even more extreme: What the hell is the difference between one Sunday when I am fully rested, eat the same stuff I always eat Saturday night and Sunday morning, and I run 3 miles and another identical Sunday when I run 16 miles?
Just letting you know that there’s someone else who shares your puzzlement.
My guess would be the kind of food your eating 2 hours before you workout.
If you eat some heavy starch/carb foods like potatos or pasta you may feel dragged down cause your body is still slowly digesting them and using energy to do so.
Maybe some faster absobed foods like green veggies and chicken will keep your metabolism at a faster rate when you need it.
There are many factors at work here but I would also look at the glycemic index of the foods you eat prior to working out.
Mashed potatoes, by the way, have a higher glycemic index than table sugar and are definitely not absorbed slowly into your system. Also, my experience is that what I eat throughout the day makes a huge difference in my workouts, not just what I eat prior to working out.
IANAD but have you discussed this with yours? If you are having problems breathing adequately during exercise and it’s getting more and more extreme that sounds like time for a visit, right quick.
My doctor encourages me to do a variety of physical activities to stay in shape but he always says “Listen to your body” - if something hurts a lot, slow down or stop as necessary, don’t drive yourself into the ground.
Sheesh… I ask about whether it’s appropriate or not to train when you feel like you’ve got a cold, and the thread gets shut down immediately. How is this any different, keeping in mind that it could in fact be a medical disorder? Just a short story: when i was doing my military service and was doing the tests to get into diveschool, one of my buddies (who had been healthy for the first few months) didn’t pass the biking test with flying colors and felt a bit faint after the test (all of us did, it was a rigorous test). Boom. He gets diagnosed with endocarditis the same day. So don’t underestimate your heart. You might have been tested a few times in the past few years, but things like this can hit you without prior warning.
Another vote for hapens to me also. There are some days I have to force myself to stay on the bike / treadmill. Other days, it is actually enjoyable.
I think it may be related to adquate sleep, but I am not sure.
This morning I caught a segment on TV (CBS local news show) that claimed that coffee (which I often drink several cups of, in the morning before I exercise) has a major, and negative effect on working out, in a way that sounded like what I describe in the OP.
Couldn’t link to a cite though. CBS’s website (wcbs2.com) didn’t show this story, and googling “caffeine” “exercise” etc. just gave me cites showing how caffeine HELPS you to work out.
Well caffeine has a medium-length biological half-life of about 8 hours if I remember correctly. When your blood caffeine level gets lower than it was earlier, you get tired, usually more so than you would otherwise be at that time. This is what’s called a “caffeine low”. Try exercising about an hour after you drink your coffee. Personally, that’s the peak time of caffeine’s effects for me.