Fear of Overtraining

[Plainsman]

Here is where I could really use the wisdom of experience. I just finished my first tri in March, and used Eric Haar's training program. Now that I have one under my belt, I'm ready to ramp up my workouts and try to become competitive.

Here is my question. His program has you start slow (2 weeks of 4 day a week workouts, then 2 moderate, and one hard, followed by a taper before the event). Now that I'm six weeks out from the next event, the 2 slow weeks seem very slow. I have moved up to the next level of workout, but I'm wondering if it's okay to just jump in at moderate intensity? I ask because I have a tendency to overdo it sometimes out of excitement or too much enthusiasm.

[Drad On]

Well - if your fitness level is higher than you just ramp up all three of the workouts..

You work the first two weeks harder than he says, then the next two weeks harder and that last week VERY hard.. The taper will be similar..

You think people get better by training the same as they did last time and last time? Nope - game up. Don't worry about overtraining. These guys are training for Ironman distance tri's and training hard.. No worries..

[rplong]

I think it depends on your base, what have you done to prepare for your increased training? Someone's signature on slowtwitch always has stuck with me, "Speed work is icing on the cake, and you don't have a cake yet." Or something like that. You need to forge the sword before you sharpen it, etc etc yatta yatta. I wouldn't increase running more than 10% per week and like triguy just made a post about training cycles, that should be considered too. Did you get Triathletes training Bible yet?

I had this fear last year when I started, here is what I did in '06:

Total Hours Weekly Avg
18:02:00 May(3wks) 6:00:40
29:03:00 June 7:15:45
42:54:00 July 10:43:30
25:29:32 August 6:22:23
26:25:00 September 6:36:15
24:00:00 October 6:00:00

Nov/Dec dropped off big time because of school and graduation.
This year my average has increased to 7:30-9:00, and hopefully for '08 I will increase to around 8:30-10 per week. This has worked out for me as far as training hours go.

[Plainsman]

I've ordered the Triathlete's Training Bible, but it has not come in yet. Looking forward to digging in though. I felt rotten during my workout today. Not sure what the deal is. It was like my body was just saying, "nope, not today." Tomorrow I'm supposed to run, we'll see how it goes.

[brock1234]

It's a tough topic this one.

I think you were really wise buying a book that specialises in periodization, you should be able to set up a good program using that as a resource.

Overtraining is just plain nasty, and it is sometimes a very fine balance between overtraining and improvement. The most anyoing thing is that there are huge variations on how much it will take to get each person into an overtrained state (depending on your job, wife (:D), genetics etc).

I'd say if you are not doing over 10 hours training a week, there's a good chance you don't have to worry about overtraining because you should have ample recovery time between workouts. If you're doing more, then I guess apart from a structured program with a good rest period during the year, you can only learn your limits as you go, and listen to your body when it's tired.

Mark.