Three years ago I overtrained badly. I'm not some kind of racing guy, just an enthusiast in my mid-forties. I was stupid, though: I rode as fast and as far as I could every single day in competition with myself. If my average speed coming back toward town looked low, I'd kill myself to bring it "up to speed." Same for distance on the week. I was a slave to the numbers, but in a very bad (and dumb) way.

I rarely did a recovery ride and was loathe to take days off. Eventually I'd burn out, of course, and have to lie around for a few days to build up a modicum of strength so that I could get out the door and do it all over again. I needed to keep the numbers "respectable," you see. Why? I guess I'd become obsessed.

I did this for a few years. Then three years ago I collapsed, and could barely get out of bed. My overtraining coincided with the 2008-09 recession, so we had money worries, too. Multiple stressors. Thankfully we made it through the economic rough patch, but physically and psychologically I was a wreck. The docs did a boatload of tests, but couldn't find anything. I eventually settled on an ad hoc self-diagnosis that was never confirmed by the experts, but never denied, either: underlying generalized anxiety disorder exacerbated by overtraining. Spent a year on an anti-depressant at a low dose, and I have to admit that it did help, so I probably really needed it. It took two years for me to get back to some semblance of normalcy. Whatever that is.

So this year I've been riding lots, and loving it lots, but I've been careful to restrict my hard rides to one or two a week. But in August I let myself go harder than normal, and as a result I got tired last week, so this past week I've had four days in a row with no riding save for doing errands on my "town" bike. Each day the progressive degree of muscle recovery has been visceral and obvious. This morning I woke up after a pleasant night's sleep and felt...excellent. In an endorphin-like way, almost. All the soreness is gone. It's like my legs are completely "healed."

Here are my questions:

1) Does four days without riding, resulting in fully recovered legs, mean I'm somewhat "out of the loop"? Should I take it easy on my ride today, and ease back into things slowly?
2) Or should I just go balls to the wall if I feel so inspired?

Too much thinking. Nobody can answer this for you, but it seems to me you've already answered it for yourself. You rode hard and got tired, then you slacked off and felt better. Visualize a light bulb coming on over your head...

“Everybody wants to say, ‘I couldn’t win because of this or that,’ ” “To my way of thinking, it doesn’t matter if your goddamn head fell off or your legs exploded. If you didn’t make it, you didn’t make it. One excuse is as good as another.”
There’s only one rule: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins. Period. Because you won’t die. Even though you feel like you’ll die, you don’t actually die. Like when you’re training, you can always do one more. Always. As tired as you might think you are, you can always, always do one more.”




“If you overtrained, it means that you didn’t train hard enough to handle that level of training. “So you weren’t overtrained; you were actually undertrained to begin with. So there’s the rule again: The guy who trains the hardest, the most, wins.”

To answer seriously, take a rest day every week. Take a rest week (lower voulme, but still some intensity) every 4 weeks.

Go f'n hard on interval days. And completely ignore average speed.

You're problem was you never went easy, and there could never go as hard as you could either.

Go really hard when the schedule calls for hard and really easy when the schedule calls for easy.

You're completely right, of course. It's just that, well...I like to think I'm fairly intelligent, but then I go and do stupid things. You know how people say "nobody knows me better than myself?" I don't feel that way, especially after what what happened three years ago. I don't completely trust myself or my perceptions.

So, yeah, I'd be a prime candidate for membership in a cult if I wasn't a post-enlightenment humanist and atheist. Good thing Al Gore invented the internet so I can ask strangers with shared hobbies about how to live my life!

Yep, I'm trying to do this. Although, thinking back over the last three months, I haven't really given myself an easy week per se. Maybe this week was my body telling me it needed it.

A structured training plan might be the right thing for you. Maybe even with a power meter. It'll give you far better numbers to watch and give you a disciplined regimine to manage fatigue.

Stop
Whining
And
Ride
Eugene

It seems like having a goal would help. Once you have a goal you can schedule your riding. No goal means an open-ended schedule which has no start, no middle, no end.

A goal (if you want to race then it'd be your first goal race, if you don't race then it'd be something like a previously-impossible ride whether it's an organized ride or just one that you want to do - as an example ride to Detroit or Michigan state line and back) will give you some time frames to work with.

Generally speaking you'll break the year into sections ("macro cycles") and the sections into subsections ("micro cycles"). Each one has a build period followed by a recovery period. Each week may have some structure too. This is regardless of whether you have a power meter or whatever. A heart rate monitor would be useful and reasonably inexpensive.

Just like you wouldn't go to the gym and do 200 benchpresses and then do another 200 and then another 200 you shouldn't be riding as hard as you can day after day. The cycles will help you schedule in easy/rest days, medium (but long) days, and hard (typically short) days. In terms of micro cycles you'll have harder and easier weeks, and in the macro cycles you'll have periods of build and rest.

hope this helps
cdr

Avoiding overtraining: strategies

MARRIAGE

+ kids and you will never overtrain again...EVER!!!

Take a few rest days per week, and then when it comes to riding, refer to Rule #5.

+1. Get a copy of Friel's training bible and build a structured program.

If you are having trouble managing your training stress a powermeter combined with some software would let you measure and track your training stress. There are some pretty good guidelines on the amount of training stress you can add every week and when you need to back off. Without a powermeter you can get very similar results using TRIMP metrics base on HR.

I am proof !
I have overtrained a few times in the distant past, but now I am lucky to get out a few times a week. Structured training can help make the most of limited time.

Were you riding over 200 miles per week?

If not, I seriously doubt you were overtrained as a regular roadie that road day in and day out. Furthermore, it's pretty near dang impossible to ride 'all-out, all the time' if you're doing that much mileage. YOu might think you are, but you're not. The body can only sustain "Lactate threshold" and harder efforts for short periods of time, like 1-1.5 hrs tops in a single workout, and that would be a true all-out effort that would leave you keeled over on the side of the road after you're done, not just feeling tired.

It's not that difficult to overtrain on much less mileage than 200/week. It's the hard effort repetitively without enough time to recover. For many it's as much mental as physical. I've overtrained a couple times running during marathon training and doing 50 mile weeks. The training caused me to continually improve and I kept increasing the intensity without backing off even though I knew and ignored the warning signs.

Mental burnout from hard workouts is not overtraining. It will take HUGE hours to put yourself into a hole of overtraining. For me, it took a 3200 mile month to push me into a hole that took months to get back out of.

Disagree. It's pretty dang hard to do that at under 200 miles per week.

Even in marathon training, a true 50 mile per week overtrain is unusual. That's a mere 1.2 hours of running per day. You'd have to try and hammer it every single session you're out there, and honestly, unless you're being forced to do that by a school coach or something similar, you'd just slow down when you felt drained. Beginners whole haven't run at all or much don't even get to 50 mpw on the run (or 200 on the bike) because FATIGUE stops them dead in their tracks.

Overtraining is when you train through fatigue, for weeks, if not months on end, at high volume. Tiredness, even a whole 2 weeks of tiredness is not overtraining. I was totally drained for 4 entire weeks in my half ironman build 3 months ago when I ramped up to 18 hours per week of training from about 10-11, and felt like a zombie when I was trying to even get up in the morning. That was NOT overtraining.

Training stress is not a linear curve. Cumulative training stress is not a linear curve. Mileage is irrelevant, wattage over time is. You could train 7 hours a week and fry yourself or do 30 hours and wake up feeling fabulous.

To answer your questions:

They are bad questions. You're looking at a pine cone and ignoring the tree and the forest, which is absolutely typical for driven cyclists. Step back, and look at this as a 3-5 day mini micro cycle, a 3 or 4 week micro cycle, and an 8-12 week macro cycle.

If you're going to OCD and base how you ride on how you feel here or there, you're going to likely implode.

The suggestions for structure and a PM are wise in your circumstances.

I'll third or fourth the suggestion for goals, annual training plan and possibly a power meter. The training stress tracking features of WKO and GoldenCheetah are the parts I find the most useful. I use them to back up my feelings about when I need a rest. Sometimes I'll keep pushing myself when I shouldn't, but if my training stress is too high I know I need a break. I try to plan things so those breaks are not a surprise but I don't always get it right.


Having goals and a plan for them, including a month after my last race where I only ride if I really feel like it, helps a lot. There's a big mental break for the winter when I start base training.

Last, take average speed off your computer display.

It's not? I understand that there's overtraining and there's serious overtraining, but IMO that few miserable days already tells that your body isn't adapting to your training as well as it should, and your recovery is suffering. That's the point where you should estimate your recent training, and make sure you don't make the condition worse.

I agree with Racer Ex that's it's wattage over time - and compared to what your body is used to. Even beginners can overtrain, if they ramp up sessions too quickly - IMO pretty common sight with those who are enthusiastic about new fitness sport and then quickly stop after a month or two.

The answer to both questions is, of course, yes. Whichever you feel like doing in this case would be the way to go. You're not paid to do this. It's supposed to be fun, so enjoy yourself!

+ gazillion to the "Get a book, set a goal, work out a training plan and follow it" concept. Friel's Cyclist's Training Bible or Carmichael's The Ultimate Ride or The Time-Crunched Cyclist would work.

No, fatigue that takes a few days to bounce back from is not overtraining. That's fatgiue. You will actually come back stronger after a day (or a few if you've gone really hard) off. You might want to call it 'short-term overtraining' but in effect, it's the same thing is training, as after the time off you will absolutely come back significantly stronger.

True overtraining is when you've trained so much that you get WORSE with the added training, and even an entire week off doesn't fix things and doesn't have you coming back ready to make more gains. Your times get steadily worse but then even after significant time off, don't get any better with the comeback. It takes a long time to dig yourself into this kind of a hole and by definition, beginners cannot even reach it as they'll fatigue so quickly with such low volume that they will be forced to take days off before it even remotely happens.

As said, I was dog-tired fatigued for 4 weeks earlier in my volume buildup, but it was not overtraining. My times suffered, my workouts even got slower, but after a pullback week and a few extra days off, I came back stronger than ever. Most folks actually NEED this kind of volume and beatdown to improve - if you don't hammer yourself, you're not going to get significantly better.

If you're always riding on fresh legs, you're not improving much. And tired legs, and even dog-tired legs aren't necessarily overtraining, and in fact, unless you're riding a lot it's unlikely. Recovery has been wayyyy oversold to the general riding (and running) public. Yes, it's crucial, but the reality is that the vast majority of recreational riders/runners don't even come close to overtraining even when they think they are.

Competitive serious roadies though who put in serious volume definitely have to keep an eye on overtraining, especially if they're putting in like 20 hours a week of training, which isn't unusual.

Another +1 for a goal and structured plan. I'll bet that you could really get into and enjoy the detailed analysis that following Friel's methods entails. Beyond that, Friel has some excellent, thought provoking points that speak to your situation (apologies, I'm paraphrasing) "do the least amount of structured training that brings constant improvement" and "training creates the potential for improvement, it's rest and recovery that realizes that improvement".

unless you are riding over 20 hours a week, you won't be overtraining. you can get sore, sick, etc. but that's not from overtraining. periodize your training (see Friel's book).