Cycling and Bonking (No, not that sort of bonking!)

Today I bonked on the bike, like I have not done in sometime. Proper wobbly and lack of power, even some stars at one point when lifting my bike over a fence. Several hours later and with much food in me, still not great. Fingers crossed it was just a bonk.

But it was a timely reminder of what a terrible feeling this is when it happens, it costs you a race or the fun of a ride and causes a reasonable amount of frustration as you sit there concentrating telling your legs and body to do more, but they/it can't. You need food, but it is only a short ride and what you have is gone, it is just one of those moments that your body says, "Sorry, no more, just enough to get home".

I tried to dance on the pedals out of the saddle to get some warmth into my legs as they felt ice cold as it has become quiet autumnal now and I had been caught out by this, leaving leg warmers at home, not much happened. I was also nursing a painful right knee and hip home, although this is better now, some warmth in the legs on the way home would have been nice.

So you start out, feeling Ok and then without warning bang, the speed goes from your legs, you can't react to it and you just plain slow down. In a race you get spat out the back of a group on a MTBike each incline gets harder and the technical sections you lose your flow and bounce around like an old ute on a corrugated track.

But where has it come from, I ate well and have done so for weeks/months now. Do our bodies have different ways of warning us? Bonking, is saying chill for a day, just go through the motions and enjoy the cycling. Or is it the end of a cycle of training and I am being told I need to work on speed for a while?

Either way I hate the feeling of bonking, blowing up, whatever it may be called? It is that feeling of: Have I missed something? What could I have done better? Did I do anything wrong? Have I over trained? Just nice for it to happen in training rather than a race, a positive to finish on.

Off to bed full of food now, the wobble has gone. :)