Cycling UK Forum

Okay, wow, thanks for the replies.

The salt-deprivation comment and the thing about food taking a while to take effect both ring true with me in particular. I don't eat any more on cycling days than non-cycling days and clearly I need to change this. I'll endeavour to eat more often in small quantities on days I do lots of cycling rather than what I do at the moment

My current routine of 2 hours of intense exercise followed by a large gap before I eat tea later in the evening needs to change as it sounds like by the time I eat in the evening it's too late for the salt/energy to sink in and have an effect so I'm kept awake.

Hopefully I'll report back once I've tried this out.

Hi, thanks for all the useful replies.

coffeedrinkerUK:
It could be I am sleeping with my mouth open. I'll ask the Mrs. what she thinks.

Tonyf33:
A bit of background. I cycle about 5 miles each way to work a day. At weekends I cycle on one day for 40 minutes intense cycling, 40 minutes intense swimming and finally 40 minutes cycling again. I don't take it easy and bomb it along, usually overtaking people. I can do 100 mile cycle rides on relatively flat land on the odd occasion without trouble and don't tend to feel worn out.
The actual symptoms I get at night are usually about 4 hours into sleep when I wake up with a dry mouth and a relatively high heart rate (I forget what rate as it's been a few weeks since I last had this problem :-$). My normal resting rate is about 45bpm when lying in bed. When I was younger and unfit I went cycling with my school and totally overdid it - in that case something similar happened and my heart rate was high all night and I lost a ridiculous amount of weight in the space of a few days.

NATURAL ANKLING:
I like your idea of drinking during cycling and thanks for the weighing advice. I'm going to try both. Drinking while cycling is something I don't do much of because I don't have the urge to. Even on the Olympic route in winter (just 1 loop of Box Hill) I drank less than a litre.

axel_knutt:
As I put above, I think your over-exercise point has mileage however I don't feel as though I've overdone it. I mean, I sweat a lot but I don't stress myself to the point I feel I'm near throwing up which I understand is a symptom of really overdoing it. The eating tip is something I will try. Maybe I'm just not getting the energy in because if I'm frank, I don't eat more on days when I do do loads of cycling. When I do eat loads after cycling I find the food doesn't pass through my body nearly as quickly as normal so clearly my body is absorbing the extra energy or something.

Mick F:
Thanks for that. I've made a note to think more about what I'm eating/drinking and when.


As I say, I haven't had the symptoms for a few weeks but this weekend I'm going to do my cycle-swim-cycle routine and report back hopefully. Cheers.

I've found myself waking up in the middle of the night having done 2 hours' cycling in the daytime. I've always woken up dehydrated, however I always drink loads of water after I get back from cycling, and any urine I pass between drinking water and bedtime is always clear, indicating no dehydration. Does anyone have any tips on what I'm doing wrong? Maybe I need to top up my salt reserves or something? I've had a fasting diabetes test in case that was the issue but apparently I'm fine.

I realise this topic is a bit different from most of the stuff on here but I regard the CTC highly so hopefully I'll get some answers.
thanks.