Many people on forums are too quick to claim overtraining for what's really merely overreaching. But you can do real over training and dig yourself into a hole on under 20 hours/week. It depends on how hard those hours are, and your individual tolerance for training stress.

Exactly. I was averaging 250 km per week, but here was my problem: every ride was a race. Every single one.

I can't explain why I became obsessed, but I did. Oh, I read about recovery rides on this forum, and always meant to do them, along with taking days off, but I'd get out there, see my average speed dropping off while going into a headwind, and push myself frantically.

Maybe overtraining isn't exactly the right word to describe the entirety of my situation. I've also told people that I probably had a good old-fashioned nervous breakdown. The threat of losing our jobs and house was hanging over our heads for a year. It was a nightmare. We're freelancers, so the work would dry up for a month and we'd be sitting on our hands watching mortgage payment day looming toward us, and then all of a sudden we'd get two weeks worth of work, so we'd sort of be okay. But then after that, no work for another month. We were treading water in credit card debt. Our nerves were frazzled.

So how did I handle the stress? By stressing my body beyond reason. I'd taken the mantra "exercise is good for stress" to heart, but the problem was I took it way too far, and did it stupidly.

I'm now hyper-sensitive to fatigue the day following a ride, and I watch carefully for signs of weakness, because I don't want to fall down that rabbit hole again. So far, this year has been good. I completely avoid looking at my average speed, save for maybe once a month when I feel like doing an hour-long time trial on the same course (I've gotten progressively faster!). But a training program? I fear it would send me back toward obsessing. I now ride almost every day, but purely for the enjoyment of it. When I feel good I go longer and faster, or I join the fast group ride in town. When I don't feel like riding, I don't.

I'm leery of numbers these days.

Your concern over numbers is understandable, but the whole point of a training plan is to effectively manage your training load. Your problem wasn't so much with numbers as it was with using the wrong numbers.

agreed with halfspeed. the problem wasn't the numbers so dont think that if you did decide to track your progress through data the same scenario would occur. keep it fun. but also sometimes what keeps it fun is the incentive to do better.

Stop using your cyclo-computer, Garmin/GPS, Strava, etc. and enjoy the ride for riding's sake. You can still ride hard when you feel like it and easy when you don't. Go by feel and forget these targets you're trying to hit, at least for a while. You can take a break on the bike, unwind on the road and enjoy the scenery.

The Golden Cheetah Performance Manager seems like a good tool for managing the stress of training & overtraining.

Probably good to ride without numbers for a while. But if you can get your head around the idea that numbers are just numbers and it's what you do with them that is important, you can consider going back to having them.

Thanks! I wrote that part of GC. I'm glad to see people getting use out of it.

No, thank YOU. I just wish I had some more free time to donate some hours to that project.

+1

Also, everyone has a different physiological response to training. Some people simply can't do a high training load without it becoming counter productive. And IME a 2 week break every 12 weeks is a very good idea if you are training hard.