You know what it’s like. Maybe you’re in the middle of a race, trying to follow an important move. Perhaps you’re trying to keep up with your mates as you climb your favourite local hill. Or maybe you’re just out riding by yourself, trying to set a new PB on a given Strava segment. In each case, you’re at your limit, barely holding on, and then, suddenly, you can’t any more. The elastic snaps and you’re forced to back off the pace and recover.
It can be a bittersweet feeling. On the one hand, the pain of the effort is finally over. On the other hand, the race, your mates, or your chances of a PB have probably just slipped away from you.
So what happens in that decisive moment when you simply can’t push any longer? What is it that makes us stop? How do those crucial moments feel for different riders? And what can we learn from those experiences?
Physical limits, and beyond
For many decades now researchers have been investigating the physiological reasons for so-called “task failure”, trying to understand what happens in the body when a rider reaches their limit. It’s a surprisingly complicated subject, with plenty of research to dive into if you’re so inclined, but to over-simplify, it’s all down to the working muscles’ inability to continue functioning at the intensity they’re being asked to.
This can occur if there’s a shortage of appropriate energy available – e.g. muscle glycogen – or, alternatively, if an athlete’s cardiovascular system isn’t able to deliver the volume of oxygen being demanded by their muscles. The latter leads to a build-up of lactate in the muscles, reducing the force-generating capacity of those muscles and ultimately leading to task failure.
But there’s more to reaching one’s limit than physiological processes alone. Indeed, researchers have long suggested that task failure is a complex “psychobiological” phenomenon that’s due to a combination of both physiological and psychological factors. And while there’s been plenty of research in this space, looking at how the physical and mental interact during hard efforts, much less work has been done to look at the subjective experience at the moment of failure.
Which is why some new research out of Spain’s University of Granada is of interest. In a paper entitled “Can't Hold any More! A Large Survey on Cycling Subjective Experience at the Limit of Effort” a group of five authors surveyed thousands of cyclists to understand just what it’s like to reach one’s limit, how those experiences differ from rider to rider, and what factors affect those experiences.
Did we do a good job with this story?
