Buzzing/tingling legs & sleep

rdt

After rides that include some high intensity intervals (eg. such as 5-20 mins maximum efforts up hills), I find my sleep that night is significantly disturbed by the buzzing feeling, for want of a better term, which I get in my legs.

Ibuprofen seems to dull the feeling and help greatly with the sleep, but I'm reluctant to very regularly take that due to the side effects of over/repeated use. Ice baths don't sound a bundle of laughs, either.

I've begun to do a lot more of these high intensity efforts this year, so am noticing this side-effect more. "Normal" rides don't elicit the same feeling. I've yet to determine if lack of a warm-down is a factor in this, but it may be - due to geography my rides end with a hard hill climb, and I don't tend to jump on the turbo for an easy spin when arriving home.

So what's going on here? I've looked in to "restless leg" syndrome, and that doesn't seem to apply. Any DOMS, if it occurs, is felt the next day, so is not really that. My partner, who runs a bit (10k type distances), gets a similar thing. Bit of a nightmare if both she and I are experiencing this at the same time :shock:

And is there a practical/palatable solution? Eg. easy spin on turbo to help flush out the junk, etc?

I'd be particularly interested in hearing comments about the physiology of what's actually happening. Cheers.

ride_whenever

Go see a good sports therapist. Whereabouts are you? Could be setup or a trapped nerve or something so best to go get seen by a professional.

1@ATIME

Had something similar myself, best thing I did was visit a good physio and to be fair to him he recommended the foam roller which did him out of a few visits. Turned out I had a tight IT band now if I can't sleep I just give it a few days of rolling and it sorts it out. This might not solve your problem but thought i'd share

ut_och_cykla

I get buzzing too - but only after really hard and quite late sessions. I need at least 2 hours to wind down before going to bed.
Try:
some kind of warmimg down schedule & careful stretching
some self massage,
protein and carbs in small quantities (chicken or tuna sarnie?)
or if you're into powders there is a product that is sold for athletes to get better sleep (by Rego?) which I tried and which did work for me.
Magnesium supplement (or salts generally might help too.
Nowadays I try to get the hard stuff done mid-day/late afternoon and its never a problem. (but I'm self-employed and can choose my times. )

rdt

Yes, the later and harder the session, the worse the night-time buzzing is - I try to avoid late hard sessions for this reason. Yesterday's ride was in the middle of the day, though, so that approach didn't help me on this occasion.

When using my turbo I always incorporate 5 minutes of warm-down, but I'm unconvinced it has any effect. I'm not 100% certain of this, as I do far fewer ultra-intense sessions on the turbo as I do on the road, and so have insufficient sample size to properly gauge the effects of the presence/absence of a warm-down period on this buzzing feeling.

But my suspicion is that the warm-down may have become part of exercise anecdotal folklore, so we all think we need to do it. I'll better believe it's essential if someone can show me a bunch of scientific research that shows it works and how it works.

I appreciate hearing people's opinions on this stuff, but as with the recent strength training thread, I'm most interested of all in hearing of evidence-based research that backs up any claims, and to help give me an understanding of what's going in terms of the physiology. Thanks.