Ghostman

I have the grunge that is going around. Started with a fever 100-ish and now feel a little better. Slight cough, clogged sinuses, coughing nasty stuff up. You know how it goes.

I have been 4 days off the bike and feel like I am losing all the fitness I fought so hard for this winter.

When do you ride under these circumstances? When do you get back on the bike? Any guidelines or personal experiences you would like to share?

LanceFanBoy

I dealt with that a few weeks ago, took 6 days off the bike, took a few days to feel right again once i got back on. Don't worry about it you aren't dying inside. You'll get it back like second nature.

botto 

you're not going to lose your fitness in 4 days, or 7 for that matter.

hiromian

Rest or risk prolonging your sickness.

VosBike

4-7 off completly will make you feel like crap the first 1-2 days you get back on the bike, but fitness will rebound very quickly. If you are overreached at all, it can even make you a lot faster.

Trying to train hard and ending up with 3 weeks off the bike could results in real fitness losses.

ratebeer

An overtrained athlete is actually more susceptible to viral illness, so you want to be sure you weren't there in the first place. If you think you were then use all the rest time you can.

If it's a several day cold, try to use the time to rebuild meaning stretch, sleep and rest primarily. You can supplement your rest with very easy time on the trainer if you're not too sick.

One thing to monitor closely is your intensity level. High intensity exercise will increase your time to wellness. Low intensity exercise might actually improve some aspects of your recovery.

Cypress

I've been riding through my crap. I find that a nice ride helps me clear the nasties out of my lungs/nose.

botto 

+1

wfrogge

No such thing as being overtrained or overtraining.

botto 

Floyd, is that you?

wfrogge

Well..... Floyd is right.

VosBike

No. Overtraining exists. It is a grossly overapplied term that has made it from sports science to the mainstream without the proper respect for the term. But the fact remains: overtraining is real.

ratebeer

I guess different people have grown the term into multiple meanings. Floyd can believe what he wants, and his is an extreme opinion/definition. The sports science people also seem to have an extreme case whereby they define the term as only applying to a chronic condition in professional athletes where the breaking down process of training is never fully compensated by the recuperative, build-up process of rest.

I think a more common, equally valid and much more useful definition is the general condition of your training being too much for your rest -- at any level. If you're serious about your training you'll get to know overtraining well. Having a resting pulse of 82 is probably a good sign to let your beeyatch rest her/his wheels a little.

Stallionforce

But extremely hard to do, unless I am mistaken. So hard, in fact, that it's almost laudable to be able to push oneself that far. Usually when you look at these situations, though, there's an overbearing coach responsible. I've over reached before, but never over trained. I don't think I have it in me, to be frank.

ratebeer

Ride every day. Hard. And then have someone wake you up every day just as you're entering your morning deep sleep stages (when your body delivers GH) -- having a toddler is perfect but SEAL training almost works as well. Sleep less than five hours a night. No napping.

Bingo! You should feel overtraining effects as distinct from sleep deprivation in less than two weeks in the form of persistent muscle pain, bad mood, elevated resting pulse (mine was 82-83), loss of high intensity drive.

voltman

Well sure, if you want to dope like Floyd.

aicabsolut

If it's so hard to do, then hardly anyone would ever be injured (from training alone, not wrecking).

It's really not so difficult to run your body into the ground physically and to be tired and sick all the time.

wfrogge

If you can ride 100% 7 days a week than is that overtraining? How about if you can ride 100% only 2 days a week???

Point I am trying to make is the same one Landis does. If your body cannot handle the workload you give it and its to the point of injury than you were undertrained for that effort. You cannot start out doing 100% for an hour a week when riding but can bulid up to it. At some point you will cap though and it might be that you only have one day a week where you can give 100% effort. Maybe you are a beast and can give 100% effort 4 days a week who knows.

(trying to be general with the effort here)


I know guys and gals that train very hard 5 days a week. They are good CAT 1 and 2 racers and very fit. I also know guys and gals that train hard 1 day a week and are also CAT 1 and 2 racers. Different strokes for different folks.

wfrogge

So everybody that has an injury (aside from a wreck) got it from overtrainnig? I did an easy 10 mile skate last weekend and hurt my back out of nowhere. Does this mean I was overtrained?

VosBike

Overreaching is suprisingly easy to do. Not getting enough quality rest is a very common problem.

However, the huge majority of people have the good sense/lack of dedication to tune it back a bit once they are seriously overreaching. It is very rare to keep pushing at the same level once you have been overreaching for a couple of months.

DrPete 

But why would that be? If there's no such thing as overtraining, then you should be able to just go balls to the wall 7 days a week and your body will just get stronger, right?

wfrogge

Its not overtraining... its just training. You push your body till it cannot go anymore then rest, rinse, repeat. Just because I say theres no such thing as overtraining dosent mean I think one shouldnt rest because resting is part of training.

Just feel that folks worry about "overtraining" but dont acually get to a real point that would be overtraining. Call it overtraining, call it selling yourself short, I dont care.


Reading more into my comment that overtraining isnt real I think.

DrPete 

You're right. I'm reading into it that you don't know what overtraining really is. Many people don't, but simply because most athletes who claim they're overtrained don't actually have overtraining syndrome doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. In most cases, what they're describing is "overreaching."

In fact, a quick medline search for the non-existent "overtraining syndrome" resulted in 91 hits, the first of 5 pages of which is shown. Who'd have thought there'd be so much research out there for a syndrome that doesn't exist?

MDcatV

Head cold - I ride, as I did this past weekend. Riding was the only time I could breath all weekend, kind of opened up the sinus.

Overtraining - dont know if it exists or not, but think it's pretty tough to do on 10 - 12 hrs./week. But, it's very easy to "under rest". I have a newborn at home, under resting is getting to be a perpetual state of being.

May not be overtraining, but burnout is a very real thing that has happened to me and to lots of fellow racers I talk to. Last year I was going very well from mid/late June until mid-August, seemed like no matter what my coach threw at me (which was much less intense than build periods in earlier months), I could handle it and my racing form was very on. But, I hit a point starting in mid/late August that I would get dropped on climbs during group rides (I'm usually a good climber), long intervals and breakaways were torturous for me. I could still follow wheels and turn out a decent sprint, but didnt have it in me to attack or break away, it just hurt too much. By the time late September came around, I couldnt bring myself to make the legs go, 1st cross race, I got lapped. I suck at cross, but not enough to get lapped. I think I was burned out and mentally couldnt make the legs go. Overtrained? Probably not. Burned out and in need of a break? Absolutely.

Voodoo76

Back on topic its one of those know your body situations. If fever and fatigue as symptoms are gone and its just a cough/ect I would ride. If you don't seem to recover after you ride then a couple more days of rest are in order. It's a little bit trial and error. And you can spend more time off your bike and be effective than you realize, by the middle of June/July it won't matter one way or the other. It's more mental than physical.