Originally Posted by
rubiksoval
No way. Overtraining is rare. Most people do not come even close to overtraining.
It took me months of 23-29 hour weeks to overtrain, and then took months and months to partially recover from and nearly a year to fully recover from.
Now overreaching and plateauing and even burning out (temporarily for some, permanently for a few) certainly happens more often. But physical overtraining, not so much.
And from what I understand, your body gives you -numerous- warnings along the way that you'd have to entirely ignore in order to overtrain yourself. I think older cyclists are much more likely to injure themselves from not allowing enough recovery time, and injuring oneself is not the same as overtraining. I use TrainingPeaks and their PMC (Performance Management Chart) to judge my training status. The first step I notice when when my ATL (Acute Training Load) is getting a little high is that I'll wake up one morning and just not be very enthusiastic about riding that day.