Upper quad pain - very worried

[chewitt86]

Hi,

I've recently purchased a bike through the cycle 2 work scheme and took my first ride to work on friday. i have been a casual cycler in the past but that was about 3 years ago. The bike i have is a mountain bike.

Within 5 minutes of cycling on a flatish road (maybe a very slight incline) my upper quads/lower hip was aching. I wasn't out of breath, my calves felt fine and generally the rest of me felt fine but my quads were aching and felt like they were seizing up. The rest of the ride was up hill and I was incredibly slow.

I understand that I am newish to it but I do lots of exercise and i'm just very worried about the pain i'm getting after a very short bike ride!

If anyone can help i would be very greatful!

Many thanks

James

 

[Garz]

Can you show us a photo of the said bikes setup or even better get a picture of you on it in riding position?

 

[cathmack]

Hi James

Dont worry about the pain. It is due to you not using the quads in this way before. After a few times on the bike the pain will disappear.
I have been cycling about 100 to 150 miles per week for last four years. Recently I tried a new cross trainer at the gym where the tracks are on an incline not flat. Four hours later my quads were burning with pain which lasted about 3 days.
It is just using the muscles in a different plane.

Keep up the cycling.

Catherine

 

[summerdays]

When you are sitting on the bike ... can you touch the ground ... with tip-toes/balls of feet/absolutely flat on the ground? (Agree a photo might help here.)

Or it could be just you haven't been using that set of muscles - I get odd aches when I walk long distances - just due to unaccustomed exercise - which usually goes fairly quickly.

 

[Trek Trauma Chris]

Bike set up not quite right, and different muscles being used. As I have posted elsewhere, when riding out of the saddle (up hills) you use different muscles in the legs to when you are seated.

 

[02GF74]

I do my commuting on mountain bike and sometimes, not enough, takethe road bike out on err, the road. I usually get achy legs that I put down to different riding position.

so do not worry too much about it but check that your bike is set up correctly.

a photo of you sat on it would be a start, unless you are really ugly and spotty in whcih case don't bother.

 

[Banjo]

Re thigh pain

i started regular cycling one year ago after about 20 years of couch potato lifestyle. At first the pain was intense. i could to my amazement see my complaining muscles twitching an hour after the ride.I would groan on getting out of chair/ bed whatever.

Now its worse, i need morphine or at least gas and air to continue.....only joking.It really hurt for about 3 months then the fitness level kicked in and hills seemed to get smaller and the fun factor took over.Now i want to ride as much as possible.

Make sure your bike fits you and is set up correrctly or you will suffer unnecessarily.Even the fittest rider will hurt on a badly set up or wrong size bike.

 

[zacklaws]

I doubt its anything to worry about, probably as the other posts have said.

Last year I bought a new road bike and its geometry was exactly the same as my other road bike, every measurement was the same, I transfered over all the measurements for saddle height etc from my original bike which was very comfortable, but I found that it killed my quads with pain in my first rides with the new bike, I was in absolute agony and could never understand why. Just raising the saddle quite a bit solved the problem.