Breakdown between effort in vs results out

Triathlon Forum
1

Having a somewhat frustrating year, and thought I’d ask the slowtwitch hivemind for their experiences as I’m sure I’m not the first to go through this…

One of the things I really like about endurance sport is that if you put more work in (so long as you are sensible about the way you do it) then you’ll get better results. Long story short but I went into the past winter with a bit more motivation to train than I’ve had in previous years, and despite trying to be smart about my training probably ended up over-reached for a couple of months and despite cutting back/a few weeks rest I don’t seem to have really been the same since, no matter how much more smart I’ve been about things.

It now feels like every time I try to put more work in (other in terms of training, or by being ‘smart’ I am about how I am training) it is no longer matched by getting fitter, with the outcome that I am going slower than I was last year which isn’t much fun. It also upsets me from a philosophical point of view, that the harder I try the worse the outcome is - which means I now have all-time-low levels of motivation to continue training.

Would be interested to hear of any other similar experiences/thoughts/advice.

2

Happened to me, it’s just bad season planning and you reached peak fitness at the wrong time of the year, pushing further without taking a break at this point results in plateaus and even regression. You could have gotten away with this as a beginner, because newbies can do any amount of training and still get faster, but once you have a couple years of solid training experience, without macro scaled planning, this is certainly not uncommon.

To get out of it, go to your off season mode and take at least 2 weeks off/very very easy and up to 2-3 month or so. If you’re still racing this year, maybe take a week of very easy asap, but a week may not be enough, and you may just have to settle for sub-optimal results this year.