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:

Hmm. Hard to say. How hard are you pushing it on these rides in terms of average speed (or if you keep track of it, heart rate)?

I ride 35 miles pretty much everyday, but I do it at a fairly leisurely pace (17-18 MPH) on flat ground. If I have a big climbing weekend ride planned, I take Friday off.

Then again, I DO fall asleep in front of the boob tube rather frequently.

I try to do some rides at a leisurely pace, but I think I was pushing yesterday's ride a bit. I put in about 4 high-intensity intervals (less than 30 seconds each).

I rarely do more than 3 rides week. Long distance at the weekends but two rides of 20 miles in the week. Those 20 milers are where I work. Flat ride where I put in a bit more than my normal speed and the other is hills. It is the 20 milers that are the training rides and the weekend ride is for miles.

Currently not able to get on the bike so down the gym for an hour at a time for some high intensity work for cardio or spinning. Thee gym work is 4 times a week and "Seem"to be working but I'll be able to tell when the weather allows me to ride.

Must be nice that 18mph is leisurely. At this time of year, cold, air density, extra clothing, I'm a lot slower (10 - 15 %).

It is more difficult to "overtrain" than many people imagine. Looking at your schedule, which seems to include plenty of rest and not too much mileage, I'd say it was very unlikely.

Overtraining isn't the same as just being tired, and just being tired is a natural and perfectly healthy consequence of exertion. If you are increasing your training load, why wouldn't you feel tired? Nine hours sleep seems a perfectly natural (indeed, reassuringly normal) response to a hard day.

I'd worry more about how I felt in the morning than in the evening. Listen to your body. If you're waking feeling rested, with a resting HR at whatever is normal for you, then I'd say you're probably fine. If you start to lose enthusiasm, get irritable, see an elevated waking HR, that's the time to think about backing off.

Having said that, you probably know the Joe Friel mantra. He says most people make the easy rides too hard and the hard rides too easy. That is, unless you give yourself enough space to recover from intense efforts you end up being unable to progress. So if you're concerned, make sure that a recovery ride is really a recovery ride - zone 1 HR - and that there's enough space between intense sessions to allow you to feel genuinely fresh for them. Looking at that schedule you're probably already doing that.

Oh, and Friel also recommends that for us older riders, every third week should be an easier week. So you increase your training stress in weeks one and two, then back off somewhat in week three, rinse and repeat. If you do this I don't think overtraining should be an issue.

+1 but I see a fair number of his type passing me by. Good luck with the training Al, I have no answers on overdoing it.

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.

Thanks for the ideas. I hope you're right, Chasm, that it is just being tired and not a symptom of overtraining, because I want to train a lot so that the century is enjoyable.

I have to say that I was really exhausted Sunday evening, less "Boy, I'm beat, what a good workout" and more "What is wrong with me?" But maybe that's what tired feels like at 59.

I'll try making the easy rides easier (and longer) and the hard rides harder (and shorter).

I've always thought that restless sleep was a strong indication of over training. Your post doesn't sound like you were having that problem, unless I mis-read it.

Trust me ... I ain't that fast! I've noticed the cold effect myself. My wife phsaws it, but I think the colder air is substantially denser ... enough to make a huge speed difference.

BTW, I get my 35 miles a day on my commute, so it's really like doing 17.5 miles twice a day. That sounds silly, but I think that's a lot easier. And when I feel like taking it easy, I do so ... no guilt here.

TromboneAl, for what it's worth, I don't think you're overtraining, nor do I think you're getting old. Have you seen a doc to see if maybe you have some kind of nutritional deficiency going on? Might be worth a look.

What is your goal for the century, Al? And are you riding it solo or with a group? I exercise 5 days a week, 3 shorter on Tues, Wed, and Thurs before work (5k run when there is not enough light, 12-14 mile bike ride when there is), club ride on Saturday for about 62 + miles, and a solo ride on Sunday of 30-38. I do fall asleep easy at night, but that could because I dont get enough sleep every night
Good luck Al. I am hoping to qualify for the CA Triple Crown award this year. Solvang double up first for me.

I think Chasm nailed it, Al. That schedule shouldn't result in overtraining. It's quite possibly the opposite, that you aren't training hard enough to avoid exhaustion when you push it a bit.

I agree with the others -- it doesn't look like you are over-training or getting old. It's natural to feel tired at night after a hard ride. If you aren't tired, you probably didn't work very hard. I commute 30 miles/day about 4 days a week with a long ride on the weekends. When I overdo it, I have trouble sleeping at night and have trouble climbing and maintaining a fast pace when riding. However, I'm "tired" in the evenings just about every day. I consider that one of the benefits of regular exercise because I have no trouble sleeping.

I train harder than most of us, because I race and if I didn't, I'd get dropped even faster. The best way to avoid overtraining is just to sprinkle in enough rest days. I typically have 2 rest days per week. Right now, I've just started really training again after recovering from a crash, and here is last week's schedule:

Sunday: Rest
Monday: 1 hour at recovery pace
Tuesday: 1 hour at 'tempo' and a set of sprints
Wednesday: 1 hour at tempo and some strength building intervals
Thursday: 1 hour at tempo and some threshold intervals
Friday: Rest
Saturday: an 'Opener' (one hour easy plus a few short buy hard intervals)
Sunday: Race (2 circuit races)

Total for the week was about 9 hours of ride time, at a wide variety of intensities, from easy recovery to frantic race pace.

I slept well that night, but I do have times when I ride hard, but then wake up in the night or earlier than I want to.

My only goal is to enjoy it. I'll be riding with my 25-year-old daughter from Kansas-too-much-snow-to-train-good-for-me-City. It doesn't need to be a piece of cake, but I don't want to suffer until the last 20 miles.

Since your pace will be relatively moderate (and I recall from your past posts that you can be a strong rider) I would only reinforce that you have a long ride per week, maybe 50-62 miles. If you can get in a 75 or 80 mile ride or 2 before your century that would be good as well.

Good Luck and enjoy!

I think if you can follow through with your training plan this should be no problem, at least I sure hope so, as I'm doing about the same thing.

Like Biker395, I do 35 miles a day, six days a week and ride at about the same speed he does but I tend to add intervals in my daily rides. I often fall asleep at night, while watching TV, but it isn't from my diet, but from not being able to fall back to sleep after getting up to use the bathroom. When I do get to sleep late, I don't fall asleep watching TV. Not sure what your sleep habits are, but you may want to start tracking the number of hours that you sleep to see how much that factors into your problem.

Was just looking at your schedule I saw Clam beach, School road and go Oh yeah you must be from Humboldt. I ride north from Arcata most every day with the usual goal of Clam beach overlook and then see what kind of time I've got. Maybe I'll see you out there. You training for Unknown Coast?. I'm new to all this and the metric century will be my first.

Latif

Chasm54 offered the best advice.

One proviso on Chasm's advice is that one must count ALL exercise into the fatigue / rest equation. If you are totally resting on the off days which means staying off your legs that is one thing. If you are going to the gym, walking, climbing stairs and etc on the rest days, you are taking on additional training load.

Overtraining is more about enzyme imbalances that result is chronic fatigue that takes a long time to get over.

I would suggest taking your HR every morning. If you find it elevated consistently, that is an indication of too much training versus just being tired.

You should also consider this: As enjoyable as cycling is, it still takes energy. If you find yourself too tired to focus on other essential activities (work, spending time with family, doing laundry, etc.) then it (sucks but) may be a good idea to cut back a bit on riding. This is not related to overtraining.

I'm training for the Wine Country Century.

I'm sure we'll see each other, I am usually wearing this pink (used to be orange) jacket:



Or I might look like this:



But with a red Specialized bike.

My resting pulse when waking up hasn't been any different. I'm particular about getting enough sleep (usually 7.5-8 hours), but it's true that I had slept less well for two nights prior to the tired day.

My off days often include some walking, but currently I'm not doing any hard exercise but biking and Bowflex.

I'd suggest you read "the first 20 minutes". It's the most informative training book I've ever read. It's actually written by a runner but nearly all of it applies to cycling. While you need seat time to break in your butt, your aerobic conditioning and power will be best developed by HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts. Hard workouts, 6 days a week, would be overtraining for many people and you can start recording your resting heart rate as one good indicator for when your body is stressed. Your muscles need a "break" to rebuild so it's a reasonable question to ask.

If found that it can be difficult to feel the symptoms of overtraining while training for an event, but be careful because those chickens can come home to roost on the exact day you've been training for.