Say I’ve been doing ~120 mile bike weeks with 4 hrs of running. Say I do a week with about triple the miles biking and 4 hrs running.
I feel fine after the big week with the exception that higher intensities on the bike are more of a struggle than I remember. I’m operating under the belief that since I’ve returned to normal volumes my body will recover and adapt from the big week. This seems to be happening but I’m still feeling the effects with over 1 week of “recovery”.
I’m hitting target intensities and durations so I’m not backing off. Just curious about thoughts contrasting what I have been doing to a really light recovery week.
Any study that I have read has suggested that “big weeks” where volume is massively increased leads to overtraining and thus maladaptations where the athletes are in prolonged fatigue. Are you? You should be able to test yourself and figure it out. I’m not suprised you’re suffering at high intensities (how high?) after such a jump in volume - 300%!!
I was at a tri clinic with an experienced IM who passed on the wisdom that a ‘big week’ would be an increase of 50% - 100% of normal training. I’m oversimplifying, but you can see that a 200% increase is not really what people have in mind.
Rest is also part of training, and you should maybe try ‘epic’ portions of that as well!
It takes a long time to recover from long workouts at more than minimal intensities - that’s why a lot of IM taper programmes can be so long: I like the oft-repeated idea of your IM being 5 weeks from your peak run mileage; 4 weeks from your peak bike; and 3 weeks from your peak swim.
I’m not a coach, nor elite, though…
I’m a big believer of heavy volume weeks. But in your situation I’d suggest to do that 400+mile week and reduce the run. Maybe run a maximum of twice for 20min. Even one run would be good. You won’t lose much.
“I feel fine after the big week with the exception that higher intensities on the bike are more of a struggle than I remember.”
Because you didn’t recover from your long week yet. Whenever I really increase my volume for a week or so I follow with a “recovery week” where I listen to my body and do what it wants me to do. Active recovery type of stuff but without “target distance”/“target volume”. Once recovered you can move on. Ditch that HRM and do what Polar tells you to do, to “listen to your body”.
Thanks for the link – that is a pretty interesting article.
To NM_123: "Any study that I have read has suggested that “big weeks” where volume is massively increased leads to overtraining and thus maladaptations where the athletes are in prolonged fatigue. Are you? You should be able to test yourself and figure it out. I’m not suprised you’re suffering at high intensities (how high?) after such a jump in volume - 300%!! "
I think a lot of people tend to confuse fatigue with overtraining. Yes, I’m certain I was fatigued. Overtraining, on the other hand, is actually due to such physiological things as hormone balances and enzyme levels, etc and actually takes several weeks (or longer) of very intense efforts to induce. Whatever, I’m not an expert, I’m paraphrasing what I’ve read.
Mito: "Ditch that HRM and do what Polar tells you to do, to “listen to your body”. "
That’s actually why I posted – I’m listening, just not 100% sure what it’s telling me!
End result: I shouldn’t expect complete recovery within 1 week if I returned to normal training immediately after (although I’m pretty sure that with a properly balanced schedule – which I’m certain I have… – recovery will still eventually occur). In the grand scheme of things, it may be wiser to plan a complete recovery week after something like that effort, though.
