Sounds like you’re trying to peak all year round.

I’ll have some of the symptom you describe during a training block. I may not be sore/hurt, but I have a constant feeling of heaviness in the legs some weeks.

Make sure you’re backing off the gas during the off phase so that you can hit the build phase with some gusto!

You may be right on this. After my last race (...back in 2019...) I took about 3 lighter weeks and then went right back to 10-12+ hrs/week with near mid-season run mileage. Within about 6 weeks my right Achilles went to shit and hasn't been the same since!

Years ago I used to really back off around Nov-Jan/Feb. Not stop completely but no training focus and plenty of recovery. These past few seasons I thought I was dialing back but looking back at my training peaks shows otherwise.

Case in point – in November I decided to cut back on bike and run and mix things up with a skiing-focused strength plan from Mountain Athlete (used to be a competitive skier) which involves a good amount of plyo and frontal/transverse plane work. I still included 3-5 hrs/week of riding and 3 hrs/week of running, but I convinced myself that I must be recovering since total hours are down. I don't think I've recovered much at all and I've likely just increased fatigue. Even with fewer hours all the plyo/strength work likely adds up to a good amount of strain.

Perhaps I'm my own worst enemy even when my intentions are good. I'm afraid of loosing the fitness I've built up, but maybe a solid several weeks of very easy work would pay off in the long run.

If this is indeed chronic soreness/fatigue, how long does it usually take to shed that fatigue and get back to feeling legitimately recovered?

I'm a biochemist and am very interested in nutritional physiology -- I promise I'm not one of those weird "super food" people who swear by a single food item. However, if reputable researchers publish data showing benefits from certain foods, I'm keen to try them out.

A few weeks ago I read a nice paper about reducing delayed onset muscle soreness (what you seem to be experiencing). Here's a link to the article: https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/...1186/1550-2783-11-31 it should be open source. Message me if you can't get it and I can download a copy using my university license, It's also been published in a journal called PubMed which is a very reputable source and is run by the US National Library of Medicine. They talk about testing this fancy supplement which reduces inflammation and the concentration of ROS (reactive oxygen species) in the blood stream. This is apparently done by increasing your body's natural response to inflammation.

Personally, I don't like to take supplements if I can avoid it. There are some really simple antioxidant foods that are cheap and will probably help with your soreness. Yes, you could decrease training volume, but if you don't want to, dietary changes are always fun to try. The famous antioxidant/anti-inflammatory food is blueberries. Apparently pecans, kidney beans, and very dark chocolate are also very high in antioxidants. A good rule of thumb is that most berries and some other fruits like bananas are good for reducing inflammation. I like having smoothies after big workouts and blueberries/bananas are a tasty addition -- its worked out okay for me and bananas are dirt cheap where I'm located. As an added bonus, there are many many publications showing a decrease in joint pain with an increase in antioxidant intake.

Hope this helps.

I think we all fall into that trap from time to time. I had to take a few days off a couple months ago because I didn’t feel refreshed after a good night of rest and napping. Just after those 3 days off, I felt completely rejuvenated.

They say that most athletes can peak 2-3 times during a 12 month span. Saving your energy for those 2-3 build ups is key while cutting back between them to allow proper rest...I’m preaching to myself here too!

I'm certainly guilty of thinking "if I feel really fresh then I must not be doing enough," which almost always results in me simply adding more and more until I no longer feel recovered or fresh. End result - feeling pretty sore all the time and likely not able to make the quality sessions count.

Are you tracking your performance in training, in terms of output (power or speed)? If you are tracking them and you are making progress then you are probably hitting the hard workouts hard enough. I track my speed on my trainer ($40 cateye thing) so I can identify workouts when I am not able to perform properly because of fatigue. I think a certain amount of soreness is par for the course, but if you are performing well in workouts then at least you know you haven’t wrecked yourself too badly.

Me personally, I feel sore most days. But it’s not the same soreness every day! Hips, knees and ankles all take turns. I can’t actually remember what not feeling sore would feel like. I make a distinction between “anticipated soreness” (from hard workouts) and “unanticipated soreness” (from nascent injuries) and then adjust my training accordingly, e.g. sore shoulder means swim less, sore ankle means run less, sore hip means ride less.

I was just yesterday telling my uninterested 11 year old daughter how I don’t get sore any more in context of running or biking. I’ve been on consistent program for about 5 years now and I have to really go hard (like in a race ) to get sore at all and it usually is just first few hobbled steps the next morning.

I do a lot mountain running with pounding down hills for 1000’s of feet at a time and that shit hardens your legs like nothing else. Makes flat pavement seem pleasant ...

But I tell you what, I’m going downhill skiing next week for first time this year and after 3-4 hours of lift skiing , I know I’ll be severely hobbled the next day.

Yeah, I'm on a H2 and track everything on Zwift and TP. Riding is my strength and where things are still going ok. Not long ago I decided to try out the Ven-Top route for fun, started climbing just below FTP, slowly increased from there, and ended up averaging what I thought was my FTP for the 71 min climb. So that all seems good. Didn't even feel that beat up afterward.

My issue isn't that I'm not seeing results (on the bike at least). I rode 70% more miles this year than last year, I should be seeing results. I guess my question is, could I see even greater gains and possibly feel better if I focused more on recovery, allowing me to hit hard workouts even harder?

Running hasn't gone well this year because of a lingering Achilles issue. And swimming ended for me in March when my pool closed. I haven't been pleased about either of those things.

All I can say is 6 hrs / day and USAT 89-92 is a really good showing!

I am 57 and I am sore all the damned time.....

Now that it is summer and I have increased my swim volume to 5k a day I am sore AND sunburnt as well..Bloody hell!

Have you talked to your physician (sports-med)?
If you have continued systemic muscular soreness, /tiredness and stagnate/regress in progress despite better/increased training, I would get checked out (bloodwork, allergies, viral panel etc.)
Non Hodgkin Lymphoma is not a joke.
Neither is CFS of unknown origin or viral.
Plenty of Pros that have been there.
The deeper/longer you get, the longer takes it to come back.
Not trying to scare you, but from own experience (explaining it away first), this is not something to take lightly.

Good luck!

6hrs a day is a lot

---

https://www.strava.com/...tes/zachary_mckinney

I was actually concerned/curious about this, talked to my primary care physician, and got blood work done a couple weeks ago. Thankfully all is within range, though my hematocrit and testosterone are on the low side (which seems typical of endurance training). Also got a DEXA to check up on my bone health and, thankfully, bone density is all good.



Yep. My wife was diagnosed with non Hodgkin Lymphoma the last week of our senior year of college. Thankfully she was able to get through it with treatment and it's now almost 20 years behind her, but it was a complete surprise (diagnosed when she went in to check up on sinus issues).

Almost 40 years of doing tris

Have rarely been sore from training

Maybe I never pushed myself enough?

I was u see the impression you WANT natural inflammation from exercise for the body to adapt

No inflammation, no reason to adapt.

Hence the reason for not doing cold baths nor taking NSAIDS

Have I been doing it wrong all these years?

I think that's more of a question for a sports physiologist -- a little beyond my knowledge.

Whatever makes you feel good, enables you to train hard, and yields measurable results is best in my opinion. From what I understand, the danger of NSAIDs is that they prevent inflammation that would normally tell you it is time to stop or take a break. There's a delicate balance between preventing pain and losing the ability to tell when your body is becoming injured. I think anti-inflammatory foods only get you so far, where NSAIDs tip this balance too far. I'm definitely guilty of taking the occasional ibuprofen after a hard training day, but never before I train. I have seen papers on links between NSAIDs and Parkinson's/dementia, but I think this requires abnormally frequent usage of NSAIDs.

That’s impressive! How about taking a block of training as an experiment (one of the positive aspects of the current situation) and increasing your recovery while also scheduling harder sessions. I would say the only way to get a definitive answer to your question would be to give it a try. It sounds like you are high-level already, so increased polarisation in your training might be just what you need.

Next I would look into was food.
Food allergies can be a culprit too.
Friend had terrible body aches even after rest days.
Turned out he reacts to components in nightshade vegetables (peppers/potatoes etc.).
Tough to find but then manageable.

Disclaimer: I am not an MD.

Nope. But overactive inflammation isn’t a normal/good thing either.
Some DOMS is good, unexplained soreness isn’t.
Almost all oral antioxidants don’t work sufficiently well to curb systemic inflammation. Those few that do may give you cancer...
N/SAIDs address a different mechanism, but also negatively affect adaptation (direct & indirect).

All Metastudies conducted so far point in this direction.

Disclaimer: Not an MD. Just another scientist who worked on things, cell signaling, biological energy, viruses and inflammation.

BOOM 💥 !

Nice

Thank you

Improving/optimizing nutrition is another area I'm trying to figure out. Not with respect to allergies (don't have any that I know of) but in terms of making sure I'm "fueling for the work required."

Also re:NSAIDS, this is a trickier one for me. I have ankylosing spondylitis. I have been fortunate that my case is relatively mild because it's managed by daily diclofenac rather than biologics. I have gone off it for extended periods but run the risk of pretty debilitating flare-ups of my SI joint that are best treated with a corticosteroid pack. I have my annual with my rheumatologist this week and will follow up with him about the cost/benefit of diclofenac.

Maybe you have a different definition of sore but, yeah, this statement is shocking. I mean really shocking.

Can totally relate regarding rheumatoid arthritis.
It’s a complex system (genetics+environment), and no single treatment/approach fixes all.
But your can chip away at it and make gradual improvements.
You seem to have the right mindset.

I think this is what I'm getting at - the possibility that I've adapted to a consistent (but not debilitating) level of soreness that allows me to keep training, but I'm never fully recovered enough to really hit the quality sessions hard. Can't go hard enough in the quality sessions = almost never feeling acutely sore.