March Cycling Challenge 2014

I'm only in my second week, but the past two times I've gone out, when I've started out riding my legs -- mainly in my quads, have felt very tired. I could understand feeling this tiredness at the end of a ride after giving a hard effort but am a little confused because now I'm feeling it when I start out. I took the last two days off completely from exercise to give my leg muscles a break. Today I felt the tiredness in my quads right away. I took down the tension to a 2 and shortened the ride to 20 minutes.

One thing to check is your position on the bike - Initially I'd say is your saddle in the correct place - both in height and in fore-aft location.

First Step, get the saddle height correct. Too low and you’ll feel cramped and put excessive strain on your knees. Too high and your hips will rock from side to side and potentially put strain on your lower back. With a friend holding the bike, sit on the saddle and place the balls of your feet on the pedals. With the pedal at the bottom of the pedal stroke (six o’clock), there should be a slight bend in your knee. You shouldn’t feel as though you are having to stretch but your leg should feel extended and not cramped.

Second - Saddle fore-af adjustment. if you are sitting too far back over the back wheel and behind the cranks then you are working the quads harder - normal approximation for the starting point in correct position of the saddle fore-aft is to position the saddle in a location that will put your knee over the pedal spindle when the cranks are horizontal (9 and 3 o'clock) - get on the bike, leaning against a wall, put the pedals in place at 9 and 3, feet on the pedals and drop a plumb-line from the front edge of your kneecap. If this drops behind the pedal spindle, move the saddle forward on its rails a little and re-measure. Don't move it more than 1/2" in either direction without a) checking saddle height is correct at this new location, and b) riding the bike for a while to see if it improves or makes things worse.

It's not a "carved in stone" rule - indeed there are more people who swear at it than by it these days, but it IS a decent starting point for people with "normal" leg lengths (and an average upper/lower leg length balance - some people have long thighs and short shins or vice-versa, which is where KOPS sort of falls down a bit)