I’d like to raise a question regarding overtraining. Two weeks ago I had my A race, a gran fondo of 110 miles and +3,700hm. The race was a success, and i’m very happy with the results and TR.
Anyway, after this race, I gave myself one week of rest, this is, not doing any sport and focus on resting and sleeping. After that, the second week I started with the build program, the thing is that I’m seeing some issues that worries me. I have my HR very high comparing before the race, and the Garmin “condition performance” feature is telling me a -10, which is a bad number.
On the other hand, TP is not telling me that I’m overtrained, nor my symptoms, I’m sleeping good, I’m not hungry, nor feeling tired all the time.
At the end, what worries me is having the HR too high. Should I worry and give me more rest or should I ignore it and continue with the training?
A higher heart rate could indicate fatigue or freshness in my experience but this sounds like the latter to me. I am the same when coming off an easy week, I’ll always have a higher HR for similar efforts. I always compare this to doing intervals, first few I usually see my highest HR values and by the end of the session HR won’t go as high even when hitting the required numbers. A training block can do the same and slightly suppress your HR over a few weeks. The TP PMC is severely limited but I’d say it is correct this time. Everything you say about how you actually feel sounds like you’re good to start training again. Pretty much just listen to your body and all will be fine, if you feel fresh, legs feel good and you’re motivated to get in to training again I’d say go for it.
Stop worrying about the tech, useful sometimes, sometimes it is a hindrance.
You say that you had a week off, don’t feel tired, have no symptoms of over training and are sleeping well. This to me says you are absolutely fine regardless of what any wrist band or metric is telling you.