Hi guys, well im not sure if im overtrained in a long term sense but i am defo fatigue. What to do now?
Like all trainer road beginners i wasnt 100%sure red light green light was accurate and over the last few weeks I added a workout on a few red/amber days. I also joined the faster group ride as its good fun (all out for 3 hrs for me). No biggie right? Wrong… i always struggle to keep with these guys and today everything was off. I couldn’t sleep last night (Got maybe 1hr). I also have a chesty cold and when i was pushing hard today my HR was literally 10 to 15 beats below what i normally am. I could not push hard enough to reach zone 4+ HR. Safe to say i overdid it.
So what do i do now? Eat loads to recover? Sleep loads, take a rest week or just follow TR red lights? I dont want to lose fitnes so any good tips out there for getting your form bad when badly fatigued.
Ps. My cold is vey mild, just a little coughing in the morning. I expect it to go in a few days.
I’d just start a rest week and then start your plan again paying attention to red/green and how your legs feel. If you are doing a 3 hour hard hitting group ride, you need to swap it for another hard workout as you can’t keep piling on days with intensity.
Echo the recovery week suggestion. At a minimum, 3 days with good sleep, eat, and hydration, then 4–5 days with a few shorter rides at around 55% FTP if you want to just keep your legs moving a bit. Assuming you aren’t that sick or don’t get worse.
I don’t follow the red light/yellow light protocols simply because I already know I shouldn’t be training the volume they warn against anyways. Red is always after a super long and hard ride - obviously need rest or super low, short, endurance, recovery. Yellow is after intervals or long rides that are less intense but fatiguing and know the next day should be endurance.
If you have a spicy group ride or planned interval, then incorporate them into your weekly schedule.
It’s a learning experience, time for you to piece together what your comfort foods are to resurrect yourself.
For me I usually do something like Pho which is a rice noodle and bone broth dish served in vietnamese restaurants and some croissants and a bit of ginger kombucha.
A wise man once said " We must begin all over again as if we were children" so think of foods you have loved since you were a child.
A mild cold can develop into a heavy cold if you keep pushing.
These days I always take time off the bike until the cold is gone or just ride easy endurance, definitely no intervals. That could be 3 days or 9 days, long term its served me well.
You won’t get fitter pushing through a cold, probably just prolong it and drop fitness.
Please stop training if you have a cold or are sick in any way… best case scenario you get worse, worst case scenario you get myocarditis as many older gentlemen here in Sweden get since they are stubborn and don’t realise that you shouldn’t train with an infection.
Take a few days off until you feel normal, and once you feel like you can hop on the bike, wait one more day. Then do a 3-4 days of 55% ish Z2 rides, start easy. Then you can continue with the plan.
In regards to intervals/group rides intensity. If you do a group ride, thats your intensity ride for that day, you can’t just add group rides to a schedule with other intensity sessions, they cancel each other out.
So if you wish to do a group ride, thats perfect, go out and ride hard, but then that ride is one of your interval sessions for the week
Sorry to hear you’re not feeling well – that’s never fun.
We’d agree with the recommendations from other athletes here saying that you should rest and recover now. If you piled on so much stress that you’re now having trouble sleeping and you are sick, that’s definitely a sign that you need to back things off.
It is generally recommended when sick to rest up completely – especially if you’re coughing and have a chest cold at the moment. Take some time off the bike until you start feeling about 100% again – and then take another day or two off after that to really ensure you’re good to go.
Don’t worry about losing any fitness. If you continue to train, your physical condition will likely only get worse, which will obviously hurt your fitness more. Right now, the best thing you can do for your fitness is to rest and recover so you can get back to training as usual.
Moving forward, keep an eye on your red/yellow days that come up on your TR Calendar and try to cap your intensity days to 2-3 days per week. If you go on a hard group ride, scrap one of your interval sessions that week so you can maintain that 2-3 hard days/week load and avoid possibly overdoing things.
Rest and recover well and take as much time as you need! Your training and fitness will thank you in the long run.
First, you won’t lose much fitness with a week off or easy. you might be a bit rusty coming back but you’ll be back after a couple rides.
Second, don’t follow the red light system for things like sickness, lack of sleep, etc. TR doesn’t know how sick you are, how much sleep you got, etc. Go by feel, be honest with yourself, and come back slowly after you feel better.
Third, eat lots, sleep lots, take it super easy until at least the chest symptoms go away. then do an endurance ride or two and if those feel decent the you can slowly start ramping intensity.
