Hi guys.
I’m a few days away from rest week my legs feel cooked and I cannot complete my workouts. A bit burned out on indoor riding.
Should I take a few days extra off (rest week will be 10days) or push through as that almost feels like impossible.
Starting to road race march with big trainings camp end march.
The training blocks i did were big and demanding all was indoor.
(Bolding is mine) I think you’ve answered your own question.
Better to take too much rest and get back at it in a few days than to overdo it and end up taking a long forced time off.
Having said that, are you saying you’re going to take 10 easy days? That seems really long. Or is it that your rest week is 10 days away?
Well rest week starts next week. But I have 3 more workouts to go.
The rest week is 7 days.
Start the rest week early and then bring forward the new block early if needs be.
Can’t start early going on family weekend.
Cardinal rule of training…listen to your body.
You are tired, so rest. If it ends up being an extended rest week, so be it. Blind adherence to a plan is not dedication.
You will do more damage to your training plan by grinding through vs. having an extended rest.
When I have been in this position and tried to push through only the last couple workouts before a rest week, I’ve gotten super super sick and have had to push back my next block after the rest week. I’ve learned that when I’m feeling as you’re describing, my body is telling me to rest. Don’t try to push through and be hard. Listen to your body. It’s better to take 10 days easy than to blow up for two weeks.
I’d agree to take it easy now. As for bringing it forward you might feel recovered before that family weekend and you can do a workout or two before that. So like 5 days rest, 2 work days, 3 more rest days (or something like that). But with it being January I would definitely prioritize mental freshness right now. All that training will be for nothing if come May you don’t want to even look at your bike.
It can be hard to differentiate mental vs. physical fatigue. They should both be respected, but I’ve found that they can be managed differently. It’s totally normal (and arguably desirable) to be running into fatigue as you approach a rest week and pushing through a little fatigue is part of the deal. But the workouts still need to be productive and they won’t be if you are getting too deep into a hole. Hard to know how deep you are right now, it’s really something you have to learn over time with trial and error. Personally, I look at the “macro” like quality of sleep and mood and I don’t put too much stock into how my legs are feeling. Legs are always going to be beat down a bit after a big block.
As others have said, the safe bet is to back off. But there are ways to test the limits a bit that are pretty low risk. When I’m feeling tired on an interval day, I’ll always start the workout. If I’m struggling to do anything after warming up, I’ll just make it a recovery spin. If I’m feeling OK, I’ll try the first interval and make a decision based on that. Sometimes you’ll surprise yourself. Sometimes I’ll get 45 minutes into a recovery spin and the legs come around and I’ll knock out the intervals and feel great. All that is assuming I have some motivation to train. If I’m burnt out on hard intervals and have months to go before my event, I just won’t do hard intervals and pick other ways to build training stress. I generally defer any intervals above sweet spot until ~3 months out from my event because I know I’ll get burnt out starting intervals 5 months out.
Fixed it for you 
If you’re failing workouts (plural) … you are done.
Listen to your body and/or red light green light. Doing a little less won’t put you in a hole. Doing too much might.
Went through similar situation just now. Failed last interval in a threshold workout, and then couldn’t get through one vo2max 5min interval two days later
Even doing z2 was painful mentally and physically ……
Same dilemma as you whether to stop or not.
Decided to start rest week early
Slept and ate like crazy.
Absolutely do not regret it.
Now getting the machine running again and feeling great. (Starting some intervals into the end of the « planned » rest week)
Lots of great advice in this thread.
Boils down to listening to your body and ensuring that you don’t get sick looking at your bike in the future if you overdo it now to stick with the plan.
Indeed I can sleep like 10 hours a night. While I normally have 8 hours.
And I eat indeed like crazy. The cravings are real 
Feeling much better. Ending the weekend with 5-6h endurance and going in rest week.
My girlfriend fell sick with fever maybe I had some minor infection begin of the week
Great! Keep listening to your body!
