Stiff but short daily commute leading to "heavy" legs I'm a long time bike commuter (over 10 years), I was living some 4.5 kms from my workplace, a mostly flat commute (well, maybe 40 m up-and-down). After two years of that commute, it had made my significantly healthier and fast.

A year ago, I moved to a place a bit closer to my work, but much higher. I have now a 3.3 km ride home going 160 m up, most of which in the last kilometer (maybe 10% average in the last bit). While I had no problems with my commute just after moving in, over the time, it became increasingly more difficult, and now, I always have "heavy" legs when I start the ride home, and I take much less pleasure in my commute...

Do you have tips to avoid this ?
How hard do you ride? If you ride hard and in hard gears it could be that your legs are accumulating fatigue and simply don’t have enough time to recover from one day to the next even though it’s only 3km. It’s made worse because you don’t have an easy start to warm up.

Even pro riders don’t do hard training every day, most of the training is spent at an easy “endurance” pace.

Take it easy (at least every second day or so) to allow your legs to recover and get stronger. Get easier gears if you don’t have them.