So after a few weeks now of lackluster cycling performance, tiredness, sickness etc.  I’ve figured out that I had pushed myself  a lot harder then I realized, to the point where I crossed over a couple weeks ago from overreaching into over-training, and now I’m having to back way off and let my body recovery fully. This is my first year of serious cycling training, I have never trained off-season before so I didn’t really know what to expect from my body in response to the training. So I’m still trying to figure out my body and figure out what my ideal training volume is, and learning what the difference between overreaching and over-training is.

From what I’ve learned in my past couple days research is that over-training is a complex condition that isn’t fully understood, and for all intensive purposes present the same symptoms.

“Overreaching is a term used to describe temporary over-training, which can require 2 days to 2 weeks of recovery time and true overtraining, which can require weeks to months of recovery time. “Overreaching occurs when full recovery is not achieved for an extended time period and fatigue builds up. This usually occurs slowly over the course of a month or two, but it can happen much quicker in the face of a dramatic increase in training volume and/ or intensity. Symptoms associated with overreaching are similar to fatigue, only more severe. Those of you who have overreached may also notice an increased resting heart rate, premature fatigue during training, decrease in work capacity, increased heart rate during submax loads and an increased thirst, especially at night.”

So right now I’m either severely overreached or mildly overtrained, sort of  like when they say in economic terms a recession is a “mild depression” and a depression is a “severe recession” lol. Going off the text book definition I’m probably just overreached, at this point as all of the symptoms seemed to start about a month ago,  so I should be fine in 1-2 weeks of recovery.

Trigger

Seems like a combination of things triggered it

1. I went from training indoors on the stationary to riding outside two months ago.  I seem to ride outside a lot harder then inside so I need more recovery at least at first
   when transitioning to the real bike. Riding outside compared to the trainer is like having dozens of uncontrolled intervals of varying lengths, I live in the mountains so if I’m not going up a hill, I’m going down one on my way to the next climb, flat roads here are hard to find. Every ride here is a hard ride I guess you could say.
2. I didn’t account for how much extra stress the cold weather, wind, rain, etc it was putting on my body.
3. Training to hard in the cold weather, I’ve been testing myself too much out in the cold, and pushing and hammering in the cold, I think this really beats your body up. I should be doing base miles and only doing one short tempo ride per week, instead most of my rides are tempo rides on the road, only the group MTB rides end up being slow to moderate.
4. Training in the gym too late in the day, this really screws me up, if I train after dinner I usually have a lot of trouble getting to sleep or sleeping soundly that night.
5. Training outside through illness, I was sick last month for about a week with a head cold, I rode the whole time outside, I think that took more out of me then I realized and I didn’t give my self time to recover.
6. I’m been very busy at work lately, this extra stress just adds insult to injury
7. I’m waking up several times a night as my daughter started teething last month and has effected my sleep quality which I desperately need with all the training I’m doing.
8. I’ve been dieting the whole last year, losing weight, and I found that’s it’s a very fine line between recovery and overreaching when trying to ride to get faster and stronger while also trying to loose weight.  Probably if I’d just ride around doing L2-L3 rides on the mountain bike then I would have never gotten in the state I’m currently in.

It’s not surprising with all these things added up that something had to give.

Discovery

I started chatting with some people online about how my performance has been down the tubes the last few weeks, and someone mentioned it sounds like I’m overtrained. After thinking about it a bit and going over the different symptoms I’ve had in the last weeks it became painfully clear that they where probably right, at a minimum I was severly overreached. It all added up

1. Loss of appetite
2. Trouble sleeping
3. Big drop in cycling performance
4. Inability to raise my heart rate up to threshold, my legs would give out before I could even get close to my threshold watts.
5. Inability to hold my previous 2 minute max watts, I could only do maybe 30 seconds at the same output before my legs died.
6. Trouble focusing
7. Weak, heavy legs
8. Dizziness, bumping into things, lack of equilibrium
9. Apathy
10. Training hard through illness
11. Prolonged muscle soreness

I think the biggest clue and the thing I first noticed was when I would try to do anything at VO2max or threshold, in other words when I would redline the system, it would show clear signs that something was wrong, that I was not fully recovered. But I ignored these thinking I was off a peak or something. But there is a big difference between not peaking and being overtrained. When you’re healthy and fresh but not peaking, then you’re still strong, just not as strong, there isn’t as big a difference as when you’re overtrained. When you’re overtrained, your tanks are really empty, you’re lucky to be able to do 50% of what you normally could do on a good day.

Recovery

1. Rest, Rest, Rest
2. Food
3. Hydration
4. Reducing the volume and intensity of training dramatically for 1-2 weeks
5. Avoiding stress as much as possible
6. Easing back into training, and watching very closely for signs of under recovery

Prevention

I learned the hard way that we all react and recover to training at different rates, so it’s critical that you don’t ignore your body’s message of needing more recovery or an easy day vs. another hard day even if it’s in the schedule or you have a challenging group ride planned.  Training on tired legs will give you zero improvement, and will mean it will now only take longer to recover fully.

I’m going to cut my training blocks down from 3 weeks down to 2 weeks, so 2 weeks of build,  then a week of reduced volume “stabilization” before going at it again.

I’m going to start keeping track of the symptoms I get when I’m not recovered, and if I see them continuing more then a few days then I know I need to spend some easy days recovering until they go away.

I’m going to do my 2 minute threshold watts test after each 3d week, i.e the recovery/unloading week to see if I’m recovered or not, if I can’t complete the test like I normally, if I have trouble holding the watts for the whole time, and my heart rate is having trouble getting up, and my legs are feeling prematurely fatigued, I know something is up then. I think this will make a great early warning system for me, as this seems to be the first thing I notice when I’m not recovered.

I’ll combine the test results with other subjective questions like

1. Do my legs feel strong?
2. When is the last time I came close or beat my personal best time on the 2 minute TT course?
3. How is my energy level?
4. Am I able to focus and think clearly, or am I tired and cloudy headed and feel unmotivated?
5. Do my legs feel tired and heavy?
6. How do I feel on the bike, am I able to dig in and ride at my maximum? Are my legs giving out when I sprint up even short hills?
7. Am I having trouble holding near my best average speed on my TT course?
8. Do I feel calm, energized and motivated to ride, or do I feel agitated and feel like I’m forcing myself to complete my training session?

I’ve found that our ability to handle training and recovery will change over time, and at different times of the year, and varies for different people, the only way to prevent overreaching for long periods of time is to know what signs to watch out for and to take immediately start recovery when you are needing more recovery. It’s normal to be a bit overreached during your build weeks, but you should not be doing a hard session if you’re not recovered, you should cut it short and call it a day and take more time to recover.

I’ve found that for myself that when I’m 100% I can ride really hard, and suffer at my maximum ability to suffer, this ability is both good and bad, on one hand it helps me reach new levels of riding ability, on the other it makes it so I need more recovery time then usual. Also being a large athlete also requires that I need more recovery time as smaller athletes generally recover faster then larger ones. So my friends might be able to handle 2 races or hard group rides a week where I’m lucky to tolerate one, but when I’m fully recovered I can ride that one ride and turn myself inside out and ride my heart out.