Cramping

I have had the exact same thing happen a couple of times. I just ran through it. I have noticed the more I do the bricks, the less it happens.
If you are hydrated enough, I would see if it goes away with time(doing more bricks).

My guess is that you went to hard on the bike. The only time I have cramped is if I pushed the pace to high on either the bike or the run.

No, the more training you do the the easier it is.  Bricks do not make it any easier as you cannot necessairly "train" your body to go from one muscle grouping to the next.



If one's urine is super clear and you are working out then yes, some salt should be added.  You are not "flushing out" your electrolytes, you are dilluting your blood salinity levels.  Go read up on "hyponatremia."



You read the Hammer Nutrition pamphlet/book, didn't you?  Of course they are going to say that ... they have to sell their product!

There is no link between exercise induced cramping and electrolyte imbalance.

The majority of the time it is a fitness issue.  Too hard/far on the bike and then asking your body to change muscle firings to then do running.

I did push the bike pretty hard. It was all hills. I did not think about tapering at the end of the ride before I went on the run. I have been doing bricks for the past 7 weeks and this is the first time it has happened.

Now you have a good sense of what it feels like to go too hard on the bike and the results that come from that!

Apply that to your race and you will be leaps and bounds above even some of the more experienced competitors there.

True.  But often people will misconstrue what someone puts out and think of it as hard fact, often in the wrong direction.  You more than likely improved and avoided cramping issues because you trained more, not specifically because you did bricks (although doing the bricks is actually training more - just not as much quality of workout - search the forum for discussions on the value of bricks to see what I mean).

Everything I posted falls into that same vein of course.  But there is a lot more scientific basis and first hand examples to the things that I posted versus what Hammer says (electrolytes, protein requirements in endurance sports).

I was a huge proponent of the Hammer pamphlet/book/website until I started to learn a bit more about endurance sports and more importantly what happens to me in races.  The races where I haven't cramped versus the ones I have all have a very common thread to them - I went within my ability instead of too hard.  Top that off with reading more books and articles on the topic as well as my coaching seminars and I formulated much different opinions of what is accurate and what is not and formed my beliefs from there.

Edited by Daremo 2009-08-31 2:22 PM

+2. After my first HIM last year where I cramped badly early in the run, I also thought that it was some hydration/nutrition issue. But as my fitness improved and I rethought my personal anecdotes, it became obvious to me that those were very minor causes at best.

Now that I've ramped up my bike volume to where 56+ miles is my normal training ride, in my last HIM (one year after my first), I came off the bike feeling pretty much perfect and had no cramping on the run. I also drank less than 1/2 the liquid I took during my first HIM bike in the same weather. Now, I could start from my normal daily hydrated state and easily do the 56 mile ride without any liquid/nutrition and feel perfect afterwards, whereas last year I could never have done that. Our summer temps are low (70F-85F), but the effect of fitness on my liquid/nutritional needs during a bike session have been reduced dramatically as my fitness has improved.

I think it's natural for people to assume that cramping is a nutrition/hydration issue because the cramps shut them down so abruptly and they otherwise feel pretty good. People also naturally tend towards a "quick fix" such as liquid/nutrition as opposed to a longer term solutions such as a signficant improvement in fitness.