Help dealing with staleness

Triathlon Forum
1

A little background. I trained for a pretty short indoor track season this winter, averaging about 25 mpw with two workouts per week. After my A race at the end of February I took a week off and then eased back into training, hit three weeks of 25 mpw and then, by accident, mostly, jumped right to 35 mpw with one mile-race-pace workout, one LT workout, and one 800m time trial per week.

I’m at the beginning of my third and last week of this before I get into the VO2 max and 800 race-pace workouts, but I’m feeling pretty stale. I’m ok as long as I’m running easy, but anything above that and my legs just feel weak and tired. My plan at the moment is to back the milage down by 20% but keep the intensity for a week or two, but does anyone else have experience busting the staleness?

2

take 2 days completely off. Sleep in. Eat vegetables. Stretch and massage. Try a run on the third day. Still not good? Take 3 days off.

Either that or cut your volume and intensity way down… maintain frequency.

Good luck!

3

i would either take a day or two off, or cut down intensity all together and volume a bit for a few days, enough that the work you are doing feels easy. you sound a bit beat up.

4

+1 on a couple of hours of extra sleep every day and some good food for recovery. If you swim go to the pool every day and do some hard sets if you’re worried about losing fitness. But give the legs some rest from running (and biking if you ride too).