Training Tuesday

I'll try to dedicate each Tuesday's post to training.  This gives some time to digest the weekend of racing and recovery and share some insight on my cycling endeavors.

I mentioned last week that I was feeling quite drained, more than I thought I should be.  It has taken me too much time to recover from big efforts, I'm tired all the time, haven't been able to lose weight, I'm moody, drepressed and the past few weeks have just been blah.  I was so worried about it I took a trip to the doctor scheduling my yearly physical a but early.

All the tests came out normal, not even on the low or high end of the ranges but straight down the middle normal.  Thyroid, testosterone, blood sugar...all normal.  So what was the cause of my fatigue?

My doctor is an athlete, so it was great to get his insight.  We took my heartrate for a few mornings and noticed it was more elevated than normal, a telltale sign of over training.  I worked my tail off this winter riding between 8 and 15 hours a week.  That was more than I ride in most summers and I probably transitioned into speed work and racing without enough rest.  Its why my last 500 meters of recent races have stunk as well and sure does explain all the symptons I was feeling above.

So with this info I took last week real easy save for a Tueday night crit, where I took 6th in the sprint.  I took in a moderate 65 miles on Saturday.  Yesterday was an easy spin and raced a crit again tonight shutting it down in the final meters on purpose to save some energy.  See, this reat period came at a bad time with the State Crit Champs this weekend.  I wish I could have been working on speed this whole time but my body was telling me to slow down.  I also had a great massage last week and will have another on Thursday.  The massgae was actually incredible and long over due.  Flushing out all the crap in my legs was refreshing and that was probabaly the best thing I've done during this forced rest period.

I'll take some easy spins this week but throw in some sprints with lots of rest, mimicking what I used to do in swimming towards the end of a taper.  According to the article referenced above, this rest should be beneficial and I should see some improvement.  We'll put it to the test and go for some good results on Saturday.

What experiences do you have with over training?  Please comment, I'd love to get some insight.