For some reason I can’t get anything to come up in the search function (feel like burn is used in too many ways) but I have been doing structured training now since April 2022 and for the first time, I feel like I am truly burnt out. The past ~20 months I have been doing 6-10 hours per week, with hopes or progressing up to ~12 hours per week and holding steady there.
In early July I did Lola as a pseudo FTP test and dropped my FTP from the AI FTP which was 237, down to 215 and then have since been trying to focus on 1 MAP workout per week, 1 over/under threshold or 2x20 90% workout per week and 1 ~3 long, low level Z2 workout per week with 1-2 75 min recovery rides. It took me until 2 weeks ago to finally accomplish all that in 1 week without failing 1 or both of the intensity workouts and switching to a Z2 ride instead.
Since then I’ve felt exhausted, I haven’t had an increase in life stress, sickness or reduced sleep, no significant change there. For the first 1/2 of last week my lateral quads were sore, did Capulin on Tuesday the 27th instead of an intensity workout and then did nothing until Friday the 30th, I tried Pleasant but stopped at 65 mins as I couldn’t hit the 58% power target for any of the 2nd interval. Since then I have done nothing and still feel exhausted.
I’ve never had this happen to me but feel like similar things have been discussed in the past (just can’t find the threads).
Would appreciate some anecdotal advice on how people were able to turn things around in a similar situation. I’ve been overly fatigued before where I cut workouts short or switched to a recovery ride but I’ve never had it coupled with a complete lack of motivation to get back on the bike. Similarly I also don’t feel like doing gym work or running, I don’t even feel like going outside for a walk lol. Sitting here, my quads are still tender to palpation but not sore at rest but my back, glutes, hamstrings, calves, all feel sore just at rest…
No I’m not in Rhabdo.
Maybe consider if you would benefit from having a check up from your Dr
That said, you may choose to wait it out for a few more days and track how you feel. Perhaps do some stretching and similar recovery things and see if that helps?
Could there be a slight psychological angle to it? Hitting the target to “finally accomplish” your target week is a great achievement.
Maybe set some new targets and build them up in your mind. That might make you want to get back to it sooner than having no future targets.
I am sure you will soon be ready to get back on the bike etc.
Just take a full week off, maybe two. Go for walks, stretch. Eat a lot of healthy food.
Big picture, the more you increase volume and intensity, the slower the bulk of your endurance training needs to be. Low zone 2 or even zone 1. Not top of zone 2 edging into zone 3.
You also need to do a schedule of 3 weeks on / 1 week rest and recovery. Do this religiously. You won’t feel like you need it because one can train for 6 or 8 weeks before the wheels fall off. If you aren’t ending the recovery week fully recovered, rested and raring to go, then you did too much. Some athletes do great on 2 weeks on / 1 week off.
You also need to program in season breaks. Like two weeks off at the end of the season. One or two weeks off during the season as mid season breaks.
edit: you could also have covid or some other virus. Just keep resting.
Have pretty recent bloodwork from a few months ago that included the general panel I would do on a patient to assess fatigue.
May be a bit of a psychological angle based on a season of performing below my expectations in all 3 disciplines of racing, road, gravel and XC. I’ve raced 8 times since April and have generally been embarrassed with how I performed.
Hey @Dexvd,
It sounds like you need to rest! 
It looks like after your vacation this spring, you raced almost every weekend until you got sick in July, and even then you were still trying to knock out “Breakthrough” and “Not Recommended” VO2 and Threshold workouts. 
Since then, you’ve been really determined to knock out those specific MAP, SS, and Threshold custom workouts which look really hard. VO2 intervals at 120% aren’t something I’d recommend regularly doing, and those longer sustained SS intervals and over-unders really bring on a lot of fatigue.
If I were you, I’d recommend doing as many of the others have mentioned previously in this thread and taking some time off to really, truly, rest. If you don’t want to go for a walk outside, that tells me that you probably shouldn’t… 
Your fitness will come back and there really isn’t a substitute for recovery, so you might as well get it in now. I’m not sure where you’re located, but it’s a beautiful time of the year over here right now – maybe the best! Put up a hammock or find a cozy spot and just go chill for a bit! 
If you don’t have a relationship with a doctor, this could be a good time to establish one and get a check-up as well. It’s important!
When you feel like you want to get on your bike again it’s time to take on the biggest challenge yet – wait another day or two. 
Your body won’t mind some more downtime and it’s nice to feel like you really, really want to get back on your bike before making that leap.
Once you’re back on though, I’d recommend only riding easy for the first couple of weeks. It’s best to ease back into things and this is where Red Light Green Light can really come in handy. It will recognize that you haven’t been as active on the bike lately and keep an eye on your fatigue as you get things going again. I’d recommend listening to its recommendations as best as you can. Sometimes people think it’s being a bit too conservative, but remember, it’s thinking long term. Most of us are really eager to get back into things when we’ve been away from exercise for a while, and often we take on too much too quickly for our own good. Pretty much all reputable coaches and experienced athletes will tell you that it’s always best to do a little too little, than a little too much. 
Once you’re feeling good and ready to start training again, I’d recommend using Plan Builder to build out a custom training plan and following it as closely as you can. It’s really easy to use all of its tools to get a plan that works for you, your lifestyle, and all the things that come up in life while you train. Adaptive Training, AI FTP Detection, and Red Light Green Light are all going to help you avoid burning out again. We’ll ensure that you’re getting the right workouts at the right time. It’s not always effective to simply plug in the same hard workouts week after week – you’ve got to have some diversity and build things up in a periodized manner. Rest weeks are non-negotiable too! 
I like what you’re doing by knowing what types of workouts you want to do and having the ambition to take on those really hard workouts all the time, but it’s not currently paying off for you. If you follow our plans and stay consistent with your training and recovery, we’ll start to serve you those workouts once you’ve worked up to them and need them based on your event calendar. It works! Trust me! 
The good news is that you get to take it easy for a while. I know that many of us find that scary or boring at first but try and sink into it. You’ll be happy you did down the road, and you’ll be eager to get back into things when the time is right.
Just shout if you ever want to chat about this more!
Best of luck & happy riding! 
Yeah, maybe should have been more clear this wasn’t blaming Trainer Road, this was a major divergence from the TR adaptive plan, that started with dropping my FTP from the AI FTP from 237 down to 215. The plan was for me to progress through those max aerobic power intervals and over/under threshold intervals but it took me a while just to do them period.
Frustrated that despite the significant FTP drop I couldn’t adhere to the plan that was prescribed to me.
This kills me to look at.
Who or what prescribed the plan you mention with 7 workouts a week?
2 intensity days, 1 long Z2 day, 2 low z2 recovery spins. 5 days a week.
And who or what prescribed that for you?
I usually just feel useless for about a month and then get inspired by a new goal eventually.
I’ll leave Eddie and GLTGH to investigate the somewhat odd training and racing phase you’ve been in.
Other elements to investigate;
-
Sleep and recovery
Not just the hours with your eyes closed, but sleeping conditions and routine -
Nutrition
General breadth and depth of your diet -
Joie de Vivre
What are you looking forward to in life? What has been on hold while you focussed on the bike? Friends you haven’t caught up with, places you haven’t been, etc.
I am so sorry you’re going through this
If it makes it makes you feel any better, just know that training is never going to be an upward line and there come difficult times such as the one you’re having.
I had a similar situation 2014/2015, except I was going through some personal stuff that caused me to lose motivation, weight, and not have the energy to complete workouts at my best…
It was important at that time to take a step back and not keep pushing it. I was lucky enough to have a coach who was sensitive to this and recommended I see a doctor/nutritionist to make sure I was eating enough to feed the work and take any necessary vitamins and who also recommended I see a sports psychologist. These things quickly got me back on track and taught me that, such as life, training has many ups and downs, and it’s important to savor the process even if it’s not where you want it to be. I think we sometimes get so consumed with the end result, that we miss all that’s in between and that leads to burnout.
As my old sports psychologist used to say, “Happy Racers Go Faster” and it’s so true! Maybe if you start enjoying the riding/gym/running without focusing on how many hours you’d like to tick off, you’ll see that it will come on its own.
I don’t know what plan you are following all year but your training load is very flat. You will just stagnate with a flat training load. The load ramps up gradually through May and then it looks like you took a break. Load ramps again gently through mid June and then is flat for a month or so (June into beginning of July). Then your training load declined into August. It doesn’t look like you have regular recovery weeks.
If you really want to push your fitness up, you need a plan that induces training load / overload with a decent ramp rate. You want to see a saw tooth pattern in your chart rather than flat. The sawtooth is build for 2-3 weeks, 1 week easy/rest, repeat adding more load, etc.
I stole this from a WKO5 video. Look at the right half of the chart which shows a base, build:
And here is the video. I’ll let Tim Cusick explain it:
No worries! Your post never came across with that message!
Regardless of how you go about your training plan I’d just like to see you get things back on track and I feel like being beholden to a couple of specific high-level workouts might not be the best move here. 
Following one of our plans does give you the opportunity to knock out workouts at many different levels. The answer isn’t always a matter of simply adjusting your FTP to make the workout achievable. Sometimes it’s using a different workout structure depending on your goals and where you’re at in your training.
If you’re struggling to knock out a specific MAP workout with intervals at 120% of your FTP, that doesn’t necessarily mean that your FTP is too high, or there’s something wrong with you. It might mean that you’re not ready for that type of workout for any number of reasons. I’d put it aside and pick something that you are ready for that you can productively knock out and use to get stronger. The same goes for the hard over-unders. If you’re continually struggling with that workout, give something else a try. You could even find another over-under workout if you wanted. We have tons of them! 
Attempting really hard workouts multiple times a week and going to the point of failure, could result in digging yourself into a hole both physically and mentally.
Once you’re feeling better, I’d find some workouts that you can knock out and go from there. Once you’re feeling better and ready to get back into training, I’d recommend performing a ramp test to get an accurate FTP back in place and working your way back up. 
Was the break in May a planned recovery period? Did you notice yourself getting worse throughout July, then double down your efforts in August only to completely burnout? Tell me how the last six months went, and when you noticed your performance getting worse.
This might be not a typical advice on this forum.
In my experience, I was able to do significantly more volume and higher intensity When I started counting calories and made sure to eat enough. Plus carb loading before really hard days. When I started eating enough, all muscle fatigue was gone.
And I’m talking about eating clean and food that’s easy and fast to digest. And I cannot stress this enough, how important that was for my performance and recovery.
This was a huge breakthrough for me.
Well, that’s sad, now I’m able to maintain fitness above 100 no problem and peak at 120 prior race event. Currently do 15-20h a week. Typically ride 5-6 days a week.
And I rarely fail my workouts. Maybe once every 1-2 months.