Looking for some help understanding and plotting course of action for soreness in quads muscles in both legs after several weeks attempting to recover from what I initially thought was illness, viral myocitis to be specific. Spoke with a 2 doctors but they admitted they did not have much experience with endurance athletes, one was even flabbergasted that a person my age could ride 300 mile/wk without dying of a heart attack. Really! Had blood labs done on Feb 19 and all metrics such as blood cell count, creatine kinase, ACTH, TSH, testosterone, etc. are in normal range. Cortisol was slightly elevated at 22.5 ug/dL with a range of 6.2-19.4 and this blood was drawn early morning when levels are naturally high.
Situation. Woke up Monday morning Jan 13th with very sore and swollen quads only, like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my 30 yrs of bike racing, I’m 57 now. Felt fine Sunday, the day before, during and after a 85 miles Z2 ride so this very sudden onset of extreme soreness from a moderate ride in my personal experience was very disproportional. I did experience that specific feeling of fatigue like I was getting sick that week of Jan 13th, after soreness onset, but respiratory systems or fever never appeared. Took a few days off and resumed Z2 training the next weekend with relapse of pain and noticed that the swelling was still there, in quads only. Historically, my legs always shrink up a bit with a few days off but not this time, strange. There was lingering inflammation and swelling. Attempted to a number of rest a few days then reintroduce Z2 blocks but the soreness keeps coming back only in quads with occasional brief feelings of fatigue. Swelling has gone down but a feeling of that deep low level soreness persists.
In the past I effectively avoided over training by listing to my body. Days leading up to Jan 13th I did not experience any of the classic signs of over training like micro injuries or lack of motivation to train. Week of Jan 13th was slated as a “rest” week and did feel what I considered a normal amount of training fatigue as I just started to introduce some intensity the two weeks prior.
Thoughts?