I finished week II of a III week training block yesterday with a 45 mile ride with hills and 3 x hill repeats. I have one more week to go on this build and then taper and then race St G 70.3.
But yesterday during ride I had a hard time getting my heart rate up during the repeats and my power was off considerably. Morale was high (read I didn’t feel like throwing my bike), the miles ticked away, but the pwr just wasn’t there.
Is this a good sign I’m carrying fatigue and should start backing off now?
This week looks like:
M: Masters Swim, light run
T: 10 mile run race pace, bike 1:00 (hill repeats)
W: Masters, Bike Zone II 1:10
Th: Bike 45 with climbs…nothing crazy. Light Run
Fr: Track intervals. Wetsuit Swim
Sa: Masters, Bike II with some climbs 1:15
Sun: Brick: 1:00 Bike then run off bike for :30
…taper to St G (off, then speed/drill work low volume, repeat)
it would be hard for anyone to give you a sound advise base on a single workout where you didn’t achieve your goal. It s normal and good for you to be carrying fatigue at this point and unless you start underperforming many days in a row, it s important to stick with your plan even when the going get rought!!!
you should not be too concern about hr… at this point under big load…your hr will be less responsive. Very normal and not a bad sign
If your power is off consistently for many days, that is a more important. when you mention power, i take it you mean your riding with powermeter? off by how much?
I see your point - if this keeps up, then get concerned, but one day isn’t a trend. Today at Masters I felt great and managed the broken mile easily - everything was firing. I’m looking fwd to a 10 mile run tomorrow and hope to do my fastest miles during the last 2. St G is climbing and I’ll do some hills tomorrow.
I started with a Stages power meter several months back and like the feedback. I had a tendency to start too hard on the bike but now with the watts display, I know I can avoid that. My goal for St G is to maintain 230-250 watts for the climbs and avoid too many spikes. The last climb in Snow Canyon…I’ll reach down and turn off the display!
I know there’s Coggan science behind power meter training using Training peaks as an example, but I’m not there. For now, I know my FTP, set my training zones accordingly and am getting used to the numbers flashing before me. If anything, it makes rides more interesting.
Not a coach, nor an expert but had my own experience with fatigue, overreaching and probably heading towards overtraining land.
I have “defined” (sounds very scientific, it is not - it is purely to give myself some direction) 5 levels of “fatigue”
Completely fresh and ready to go!
This workout I am going to do in a few hours/minutes is going to be tough, maybe I should just watch some TV, hang with friends, work or whatever excuse I can come up with. During heavy training periods that is probably quite normal and I always ignore it and once I have started the session I am perfectly fine
This workout I am doing right now is tough to complete, maybe even impossible. Depending on how bad I feel I either push through or do an easier and shorter session but I always make sure to get a good nights sleep, nutrition etc in the next 0-48 hrs after such workout. It sounds like this is what you experienced.
I have struggled to complete several of the last workouts, sleep problems start although I feel exhausted, mood swims occur, feeling depressed etc. Earlier I ignored when that happened but I got into a pretty bad state of “level 3 fatigue” some months ago, so now I take 1-3 no training and/or active recovery days when this happens. I am also starting to learn to predict when I am approaching “level 3” fatigue so I avoid having to take multiple rest days but can keep training and reap the benefits
Overtraining. I have never been in this “zone” so do not know how it feels like but I have been deep into “level 3” and I do not want to imagine what 4 would be like. Hell on earth I imagine.
Anyway, long story short: You were probably just getting into “level 2” so watch your sleep, nutrition, work stress etc next 0-48 hrs and you are probably back at level 0 or 1. Watch out if you have multiple of those workouts with that feeling over the next couple of days. If that is the case, back off a bit.
Helpful comments. Today has gone much better all around as sometimes a good nights rest works wonders. Tomorrow, I’ll be back on the bike after a run and will see how the session goes. I like your tiered approach as I remember a few years back, I was definitely down in three. Wow, didn’t even know it.
I like the idea that each of us has to define what fatigue is on an individual basis. My world <> your world <> the next guy’s world.
I used to think I trained hard until I got a coach who prescribed large volumes of all three sports. I got great results and learned that I could be tired to a new level but still recover on a week to week basis.
Last year, I had lots of mental stresses, non-training but physical stresses and I was trying to train for an IM in August after doing a R2R2R run in May. I don’t mean run of the mill stresses but the big list of changes that, thankfully, didn’t include any deaths. Job changes, moving, sickness in the family and still I expected to do bucket list level athletic stuff. In retrospect, I put too much on my plate for the number of hours in the day but, at that time, I figured that each stress would be part of training for the final event (the IM). I was grossly ignorant of my plan vs my innate abilities.
Individual workouts can’t describe true fatigue/overtraining. I’ve been really tired lots of times. After an IM I usually need a month to get truly back in the groove. After 2014’s unplanned walk of the marathon, I was mentally content that it truly was the best I could do and started into my recovery. I slept soooo much. I was ravenously hungry. I was depressed and unmotivated both at work and athletically. None of those by themselves would be cause for concern. I had dug such a big hole that it took me five months to mentally and physically recover from the six months that led to my IM race day. Part of that was being older than I was the last time I did an IM (four years ago). Most of it was not appreciating the true effort I was putting into all aspects of my life. My fatigue was to a new level. True overtraining/exertion.
My ultimate point is, your mileage may vary. Everyone has to figure out their levels. In my household, I’m not even close to the overexertion expert. My wife is chronically fatigued from being a physician who also wants to compete athletically. A week of vacation gets her back to exhausted. Most of my friends who bitch about being tired can’t hang with her for a full day otherwise a weekend. I’m always glad she puts her endurance skills to work for society.
I think it is fine to find out where your tipping point is. I thought I knew where mine was but my coach took me further. The rest of my life showed me there is a point that I can’t go beyond without paying a real price. Lots of people don’t find out their true limits.