Originally Posted by
TromboneAl
Until recently I exercised hard six days a week, and sometimes I had these nights when I was really tired. I cut back to four days per week, and those almost disappeared.
I'm now training harder for my upcoming century, and last night I had another one of those nights. I was falling asleep while watching TV, went to bed an hour early, and slept for nine hours.
I'm eating plenty, with lots of vitamins and minerals. On yesterday's ride (March 10) I ate more carbs than I usually do (.5 quest bar, 1 larabar, 1 pack of salted peanuts). I felt pretty good during and after the ride, but after dinner I was just dragging around.
So my question: is this overtraining or am I just getting old?
If it's overtraining, then perhaps to meet my weekly goals I should do two long rides per week rather than three shorter rides.
Advice?
Here's my schedule and training plan:
Hello Al, I looked at your schedule and the only comment I might make is that I will typically ride four days a week. Tuesday, thursday and then Saturday, Sunday. What works best for me, are all the days I push it except for Thursday where I might back off a little on the intensity to be fresher for the weekends....so I can keep up with the youngsters
You might take Friday off or back off on your ride for that day.
Now that DST-daylight savings time is here I will throw in another day during the week if I can fit it into my schedule and I feel OK. Did that yesterday. Like others have said listen to your body. Feeling tired and getting nine hours of sleep is not a bad thing as long as it does not persist. Heck I'll take nine hours of sleep any day!!!
About a month ago the week I was to ride a century I had some symptoms of being tired but also felt like I might be getting sick. Got over that (at least I thought so) and rode well on the century up until mile 98 and I got dropped but still beat my best time by 5 minutes. Three weeks later I felt the same symptoms coming on; but this time it was much worse and ended up being a bad sore throat so went to the doctor and had a throat and upper respitory infection. Did not miss any time on the bike because I went to the doctor right away.
If I'm training for a longer event I'll up the miles on the weekends like you have on your schedule. I have a 200K on march 23rd...we'll see how I do on that.
So my only suggestion is maybe back off on Friday a bit. Good luck.