I did too much in 2009, commuting Cardiff-Bristol. I felt profoundly knackered, it came on after the first few weeks and I kept trying despite it all. Took me 18 months to get my vitality back when riding. It was pretty bad. I kept trying to train, and being crap at it. Only several periods of 6-8 weeks of inactivity helped.

I’ve experienced overtraining a number of times in the gym, but have never had it on the bike (probably because I rarely ride more than 3 times a week)

Sounds like you should’ve listened to your body Mol… and possibly not upped your volume so quickly.

Yep. Result: overtraining.

What distance is that commute BTW? About 100 miles all in??

Not sure if it was overtraining but by the end of last summer a combination of a very busy six months in my shop and riding 3 times a week on average left me feeling completely burnt out with whole days passing in which I never felt as though I was more than 50% awake.

EDIT: I probably ended up drinking a bit more than was good for me then as I found that alcohol numbed the feeling of tiredness.

I would have thought it’s not too hard to over train, I’ll use triathlon as an example, you don’t see the pros smashing out 70 hours week in week out with all the sessions at their max intensity. 10 hours a day working isn’t an unimaginable amount of time so it can’t be because they don’t have the time, ergo training more than a certain amount is counter productive. Quick sidebar 48hours with Tim Don: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BaDYnpTA2Y the running day isn’t particularly long time wise as 18K is done at race pace so 30mins/10K, equally the next day 6K in the pool and a 75K ride won’t take him long either but equally it’s obvious to see more would have a big effect on the rest of the week. Recovery is as (or more) important as the training it’s self so I’d also suggest it’s very easy to over train on just a few hours a week, especially if you are already working long hours and aren’t getting adequate sleep to recover. I’d have thought missing 2 hours of sleep for 2 hours extra training would be quite counter productive. Taking Tim Don as an example again if he is running at 20Km/hour for 18K of his run day he would be able to do the 30K in 2 hours easily, would you advocate him doing it 4 times a week and holding a job at the same time? Only 8h hours a week of training but obviously way way too much.

Iain

Yeti – 42 miles each way. Not overly hilly but not flat. I kept trying to beat my best time too, which was stupid – can’t stop myself sometimes it seems.

I kept trying to beat my best time too

yep – every single time 🙄

yep – every single time

❓

How many days a week were you doing it… must’ve been soul destroying, good mental prep for a silly event like say BNT??

Iain – I’ve read stuff that suggests that Tim Don trains for all 3 sports every day, except his Kenyan run day. Active rest sessions etc. With some run sets that are frankly rediculous. Granted it said he had a rest/massage day.

I’ll watch the link now 😆

yep – every single time

Most rides – but especially commutes.

Always trying to extract an extra bit of time from the ride. Every ride is a race – against myself. I’d be (am) crap at competing against others 😳 but pretty much can’t get on the bike without trying to wring the last bit out of itt…

“over” training is required to stress your body into a positive response.

I think this is more correctly referred to as “overloading” or “overreaching”. An improvement in fitness is produced by a training overload, followed by an appropriate recovery period where adaptation takes place. You don’t get fitter when you are training; you get fitter after recovering from the training.

“Overtraining” is what happens when you overload repeatedly without the recovery phase. Your body does not get an opportunity to adapt to the overload, and your fitness either plateaus, or can actually decline.

If you are not doing regular, high intensity exercise, you are probably unlikely to experience overtraining. Most people can probably handle moderate exercise every day or every other day, as long as they are sleeping and eating OK. If you are pushing the boundaries of your ability a bit further, it could be an issue. Monitoring things like your general mood, resting heart rate in the morning and performance in standard training routines can be useful in spotting if something is going wrong.

I have experienced this once, after a prolonged period of heavy racing and training. I did a couple of races in one weekend, and noticed that although I performed well in the second race, my heart rate during the event was way down on my normal racing level, and I just felt rubbish. I guessed I was on the verge of overtraining, so I backed off and tapered down for a couple of weeks. I believe I was lucky to catch things just at the right time, because I ended up with some of the best form of my life.

So overtraining is real, and should be taken seriously, but if you keep an eye on how you are feeling, and structure your training sensibly, it should not be a problem for most people.

rkk01’s post rings bells. I used to ride with a clubmate for whom every session was life or death (training rides, club events, open races). He was fearsomely fit during winter training, and I wondered how on earth I was going to get up to that standard. However, by May, with a lot of the season still ahead of us, his head had fallen off, and he just disappeared.
It can be difficult, but if you really want to peak, you need to know when not to train, and you cannot push to your limits in every session.

The Southern Yeti – Member
How many days a week were you doing it… must’ve been soul destroying, good mental prep for a silly event like say BNT??

Iain – I’ve read stuff that suggests that Tim Don trains for all 3 sports every day, except his Kenyan run day. Active rest sessions etc. With some run sets that are frankly rediculous. Granted it said he had a rest/massage day.

I’ll watch the link now

He does but not all day every day and not all at high intensity. There are lots of videos of various triathletes training days which I find quite interesting and you can see a sample of the Brownlees training weeks somewhere online. They all train a ridiculous amount, as you’d expect (the Brownlees doing 70miles running a week IIRC) but still only in the range of 25-40 hours a week. As Tim says “We don’t just turn up and go harry hard and win.” To do that kind of training you need some serious consideration into how you are going to recover from the hard sessions, active recovery, lots of massage, lots of stretching, lots of sleep, lots of eating etc. So yeah very easy to overtain IMO. Of course you can avoid it by learning about how to structure your training properly, tapering for key races etc or take the easy way out and have someone tell you what to do, which was the option I chose!

Iain

How many days a week were you doing it… must’ve been soul destroying, good mental prep for a silly event like say BNT??

Like I say – started off about 4 days a week, ended up closer to 2 cos I was so knackered. It was however really enjoyable because the ride’s actually quite nice for most of it. And the feeling of doing a long ride for transport is quite good for me. Far far easier than going out at 8pm after work for a 3 hour slog in the rain, which is what I used to do.

Not really good prep for BNT I don’t think – I expect the actual course there to constitute good fun riding/swimming/running/walking in fab scenery, and with a real sense of occasion 🙂

Iain – thanks for the link to the video.. great stuff. I th ink what you’re saying is spot on. Essentially it’s about recovery as much as it is about training.

Thank you Kcr as well… good posts!

Course it exists. Done it. And I’m a long way from an elite athlete. It’s entirely possible to overtrain (or under-rest) on less than 10 hours a week. Just depends what you’re doing in that time and what else is going on. Like amount of sleep.

I expect the actual course there to constitute good fun riding/swimming/running/walking in fab scenery,

Hahahaaa… I expect you to be miserable, gritted teeth looking at your feet.

Stever – care to expand?

Feeling really low, going backwards timewise. Being unable to go harder when you want to. It’s not just ‘a bit tired’ or having heavy legs, it’s inside your head and a bit of mental lowness a bit like flu. For me anyway.

I find riding 3 days a week ideal for me with a day between rides.

If I ride every day then my legs still feel tired on the second, and although ill be almost as quick I don’t feel I am gaining anything by doing so.

When I used to swim, 5 days a week was enough, with Tuesday/Thursdays off, when I was swimming 7 I didn’t get anything out of the Tuesday/Thursdays as these were morning sessions after swimming the previous night, it just felt like my body was going through the motions without any actual effort.

What sort of training were you doing to feel that at the volume you were doing? How did you work up to it?

The other side of the coin is everyone has a tendency not to push themselves hard enough and it’s difficult to know when you are actually tired or when you need to harden up and push on unless you have a lot of experience or a power meter or a good training plan. I have come into races feeling very fatigued then gone out and done better than ever before and as I didn’t know what I was doing training wise wasn’t sure why or how to repeat the results. I would like to think of myself as the kind of person who is far more susceptible to over training than not pushing hard enough (don’t we all) a couple summers back my training was in the region of 30hours per week included 4 races a week. So you’d imagine quite a hard week, but looking at my training plan for next week I have more high intensity stuff by far, every day has something at or over race pace and I’m only on one session a day atm. So I think what most people are perceiving as over training is just normal fatigue that they could push through but (quite rightly, it’s bloody hard to push on and I certainly can’t on my own) don’t.

Iain

Hahahaaa… I expect you to be miserable, gritted teeth looking at your feet.

Ah, but you don’t know me very well 🙂

I’ve had it diagnosed once, when I was young and fit. A normal summer week (if I remember rightly)

Mon 2hrs swim, 1hr weights
Tue, 25mile time trial, 8 miles getting there and back
Wed, club ride, min 3hrs
Thursday, 2.5hrs weights, 1hrs swim
Friday, either long ride, or Friday evening MTB racing
Sat, if raced Fri, long medium mtb ride (5-6hrs), if not raced, Race!
Sunday, whichever I didn’t do on Saturday really.

This on top of a full time job (obviously no kids / wife back then either) eventually managed to grind me down to constant coughs and colds, and it got to the stage that I only felt like I had any energy when I was actually training / racing. Other than that, I just wanted to sleep. I was worried that I was feeling knackered all the time so went to the docs. Result, 2 weeks of little / no training, a much better knowledge of resting being important in training and much better nutrition.
Now I feel tired all the time due to a young baby while convincing myself its due to all the cycling I do. It’s not the same!

I think this is more correctly referred to as “overloading” or “overreaching”. An improvement in fitness is produced by a training overload, followed by an appropriate recovery period where adaptation takes place. You don’t get fitter when you are training; you get fitter after recovering from the training.

I agree and with adaption comes the ability to train harder and longer and for the adaption procesess to quicken.
My general point was that there is a general deterioation in standards (distance running) as we learn more about physiology, nutrition and adaptation. Why is that?
Many of us experience symptoms of overtraining such as inability to sleep, exhaustion, high resting heart rate etc but these arent necessarily a result of overtraining but of rushing the adaption process, these can be one and the same but thats not to say the training load should lead to “overtraining” or is wrong just that the process needs to be extended.
Bear in mind what Brendan Foster said when asked what its like to be a distance runner, “you wake up tired and go to bed exhausted”

Just done the days of the week in my spreadsheet. I’m really going to need a rest tomorrow.

rest is inactivity
recovery is a combination of activities aimed at speeding up a return to homeostasis and has to be ‘done’ – just doing nothing isn’t recovery
the psych side of over training is underestimated – self-protection by an over concerned subconscious and also a lack of self confidence in ability and response to training
there are lots of biochemical markers associated with a drop in performance, but the mental signs often show up much sooner

back to work

I expect you to be miserable, gritted teeth looking at your feet.

Actually maybe you do know me well, because you are helping me get really psyched up for the BNT 🙂

😀

Fancy an epic training ride or something?

Just done the days of the week in my spreadsheet. I’m really going to need a rest tomorrow.

Have you done them in different colours?
Lot’s of different colour veg is meant to be good, so I reckon the same must hold true for spreadsheets.

Fancy an epic training ride or something?

Maybe nearer the time. Time for epic rides is limited.

I know a really good S Wales classic road ride that’ll get you going.

Jon Ackland’s The Complete Guide to Endurance Training , 2007 devotes lots of room to causes, symptoms and cures for overtraining. The main causes he identifies are:
1. inadequete recovery between sessions
2. excessive amounts of high-intensity (and sometimes high-volume) training.
3.Sudden changes in training load.
Other training factors include…
4.intense strength training
5. frequent competition and travel
6. monotomy in training programme
7. no off-season
Non-training factors include…
8. inadequete nutrition
9. insufficient sleep and rest
10. anxiety
11. occupational stress
12. mental conflict
13. changes and irregularities in lifestyle
14. successive failure to achieve goals

Sweet… we could try and co-ordinate it for when Dirty is down that way??

Have you done them in different colours?
Lot’s of different colour veg is meant to be good, so I reckon the same must hold true for spreadsheets.

Oh FFS Ian… 🙄 😡 👿

I’m not sure I can muster the energy today for different colours. Might have to wait till Thursday. 😐

RAG code it Darcy.. you know it makes sense.

Perhaps, Yeti.

RAG

Have you gawn all IT on me there? 😉 😐 😀

Red
Amber
Green

Traffic light colour coding for simple spreadsheeting.