Struggling to balance occupational recovery challenges with training

Training
1

I’ve been cycling for more or less 15 months. Past experiences on the bike I may as well not count since it was maybe a couple of years of fixed gear riding in my 20s. (39M).

I’m gonna pile in a good amount of detail bc I feel like it will be needed to accurately assist with this post. I work as a full time firefighter (24/48) schedule at a very busy house. Every third day i’m usually at least a little sleep deprived but normal its something like very broken sleep at a max of around 2-3 hours if not at all. Though I’ve been an athlete almost my entire adult life since (firefighter for 18 years now), I’ve always had a sympathetically dominant skew; natural speed, power, etc. Currently my goal this year has really been to get to the next level on the bike. I’ve started crit racing in cat4/5 this year and have done 3 races and a couple of racing clinics. When I bought my bike last april I think my starter ftp was in the 180s. I trained for the MS150 last year and by october I was 273. 2 weeks ago I had a peak at 290 ftp on garmin’s AI but then back down to 283 then 280 as I find myself in another strange rut. For racing this year I cut down from 203lb to about 190-193. Due to work I don’t fancy the idea of losing too much mass, i’m already pretty lean and don’t have much excess fat to shave.

273 to 280.. 5% increase in a year is disheartening. I’m also not sure why these weird ruts happen and what to do when they do so i’d like to explain what they look like. Garmin shows that my Vo2 max has improved from 51-56 since. When it was at 51-52 last august i did a vo2 max and lactate threshold lab test showing my Vo2 max was 56 back then. I haven’t done one since to know if the improvement would also reflect a 4-5 point gain from 56.

Some details on these strange ruts-- It usually starts with my heart rates increasing a LOT. Early into my warmup my heart rates will get up into the 115-130 range and I can tell garmin is about to lay down some harsh criticsm. Resting heart rates will usually rise also and if i continue to push too much volume or intensity, usually high difficulty sleeping. I am not fully sure the nature of these ruts or how to even approach them… Garmin dumped my V02 max from nearly 57 back down to almost 54 in the last two to three rides. I have had a history with some bouts of overtraining. One severe bout of full blown overtraining syndrome in my early twenties that almost resembles a medical emergency looking back; so along the way I have learned some lessons on what to look out for - but I am far less in tune with it when it comes to cardiovascular training vs lifting which is what I dealt with before.

My training consists of usually trying to get 1-2 high intensity trainerroad workouts in a week and fill the rest of the week in with as much z2 type base rides that i can; often though i find it difficult to get my weekly hours on the bike up into the 12+ hour range where i’d like them and find several weeks where I can barely manage 8-9. At work is when I lift, so every three days I generally get it in with stronglifts/menzter style programming with some flexibility. Basically getting in squats, deadlifts, overhead press, bench and rows between the two days. I typically build to a heavy set of 3-5 for the lower body and maybe 2-3 working heavy sets for upper body to stay off putting too much on the legs. On a super high volume bike week I may reduce on of the lifting days to something like easy strength style programming.

My struggles are with these strange rutts of declining fitness… How to approach them, what to do when they happen etc? I have one sports med doc who helped me overcome issues in the past who was always very in favor of the Phillip Mafetone style training – he believes I should stick to all aerobic cycling/training outside of work and basically just race when i race…

Currently my trainerroad is set up for a mid volume critorium plan. I feel like I need to go back to the drawing board honestly. If my HR keeps rising part of me is inclined to believe I am building too much stress hormone; my instinct is usually to combat this with moving into more aerobic work and less intensity but I am not certain anymore and just feel super demoralized. Any advice would help at this point. It’s so confusing when if I take time off my workout sucks… and when I ramp up volume my workout also sucks.

Have I just hit the ceiling? I have a peak watt sprint PR of 1883, and can repeat 1500w sprint pretty decently in good conditions, but it does me no good when i’m redlining my heart to even hang on in a crit and am dusted by the end of it. I’d really like to get my ftp over the 300 mark, especially not being a smaller rider - but I am having a really hard time understanding what’s holding me back. I’ve tried picking apart the data before seeing big fitness improvements and one common denominator I see is that I managed to get a long base ride in that week a few days prior to the workout that showed the improvement. I have a combination of garmin, TR and morpheus for metrics like HRV and recovery etc. They don’t always seem accurate at all though.

1 Like
2

Hey @FuryTR :slight_smile: Thank you for posting and giving lots of info!

Before even going to your Calendar, I had a feeling you may just need recovery.

A few things that stood out to me you mentioned:

  • Full-time firefighter (24/48) schedule at a very busy house.
  • Every third day, I’m usually at least a little sleep deprived.
  • Heart rates are increasing a LOT.
  • Resting heart rates will usually rise also and if i continue to push too much volume or intensity, usually high difficulty sleeping.
  • Have had a history with some bouts of overtraining.
  • 1-2 high-intensity TrainerRoad workouts in a week.
  • I’ll fill the rest of the week in with as much z2 type base rides that I can
  • Every three days, I generally get it in with stronglifts/menzter style programming with some flexibility.

Few things that stood out to me on your TR Calendar:

  • When you first started training in April 2024, you took on lots of training load without progressive overload. This can have a trickle effect on the long term and cause you to burn out.
  • I am not seeing a true pattern or training load vs. recovery.
  • On the days our fatigue management system detects a Yellow or Red day, you have either kept training or done interval work instead of resting.
  • Your most current post-workout survey response is labeled as “fatigued.”

I think there are a lot of factors pointing to fatigue here. Training is important, but recovery is key to drive the adaptations. If you don’t prioritize recovery when you’re just putting your body in the ring again and again, and at some point is going to give out.

Moving forward, I would recommend:

  • Keep your 1-2 TR intervals days
  • Add Zone 2, but respect the yellow and red days
  • Take Recovery Weeks super seriously on the bike, at the gym, and anything else you do that could be putting strain on your body. This time is to regenerate so very low-key endurance, and maybe instead of lifting, just stretch.
  • Keep an eye out for nutrition and hydration. Your life/training schedule is really demanding + especially when not getting proper sleep.

More doesn’t equal faster, so let’s try focusing on quality progressive overload.

Jon made a great video/podcast that goes over this

3

Of all the plans that exist on TR, which do you think would best suit me?? I’d like to try and get a higher volume of low intensity work.. I try to hit the 10+ hour mark when I can a week.

4

I’d be tempted in you’re shoes to follow a LV Masters plan and sprinkle in TrainNow sessions if you feel you have the capacity. My mates who are firefighters are really strong :flexed_biceps:

5

I would recommend letting TR build you a custom plan :slight_smile:

Depending on what it gives you, you can set it to 2 interval days and the rest endurance. Let me know if you go this route and I can take a look once it’s built!

6

I plugged in the custom plan per the recommendations the system gave. Every other day is either threshold, vo2 max or sweet spot.. I feel like the plans lean super hard into anaerobic and sympathetic type workouts. All things considered in my post and given my history I’m super apprehensive about following these plans. In the crit races currently I have pretty decent glycolytic fire power and a peak sprint of around 1883. Realistically given conditions 1400-1600. What I seem to struggle with is repeatability and recovering my HR. What I can say is that when I start training a lot of endurance only, my HRs for a given wattage go down significantly and it usually takes on a couple of weeks to see this trend. When I start plugging in intensity work, all of my HRs for a given wattage start to rise a lot and eventually I get to a point where even getting warmed up my HRs pick up too quickly. At this point is usually when I can tell TR will pull me into a recovery week. Right now I feel buried in that type of condition. I don’t feel like the 30-90min endurance rides are enough but if I try and maintain the 3 sweet spot and interval days I have no idea when I can even plug my longer rides in to create a balance so I don’t become too sympathetically overloaded. Every three days at the firehouse I lift. High intensity, low volume. Every workout AI out there seems to grossly misinterpret the strain created by weight lifting but I can’t blame it given the metrics we have to measure it in this day and age.

Would a high volume polarized master’s plan maybe work?

7

Hey @FuryTR :slight_smile:

You can set the plan to only give you 2 interval days, which is what I was suggesting.

Training Plan

You can do this (on the website) by going to your Calendar>>Click on Plan Start annotation>>Edit Plan>>Click on Settings>>and for Intense Days per Week choose 2 Days (Masters Athletes).

Screenshot 2025-07-11 at 10.53.35 AM
Screenshot 2025-07-11 at 10.53.35 AM2322×1296 221 KB

Weight Training

As far as your lifting days go, I know they are not fixed, since they happen every 3 days, but try to follow these suggestions when pairing them with cycling workouts: Integrating Strength Training

I would also recommend adding your workout sets so our fatigue management system can take them accurately into account: How to Add Working Sets to your Strength Training

Crit Racing

If you already know you have planned crit races, I would add them to your training plan so the training is built around them. This will make everything flow better in terms of appropriate training loads.

Here is how you can prioritize them: How to Add A, B, and C Events to Your Calendar

Fatigue Management

As I mentioned, in your case, it is really important that you follow the yellow/red days recommendations, as it sounds like you’re fatigued.

I think the above should help you get back on track, and it’s a good way to start managing training load vs. recovery with all the things you’re juggling with! Remember, more is not always good. We want quality training instead quantity.

1 Like
8

Ive taken a lot of the advice here into account. My new plan is 5 months stretched out. I let the AI generate me a plan and then set it to masters which recommended 4 days a week and 2 intensity days. The question i have now deals with the drop in volume — im moving from 10-14hours a week into 6ish. Im curious what will happen to my fat oxidation and capability on long rides since there is virtually nothing over 90 minutes. All the rides are 1-1.5 hours for the most part. Ive been planning all of the endurance days after I get off shift, and the intesity days on the next day since i can get a full night sleep. My question is what to do about long rides? Since in a 2-3 week block there’s not enough workouts to fill EVERY single day off, I have plugged a 3 hour easy ride in whenever the workouts thin out. To try and double down on recovery, I’ve plugged the 3 hour rides in by themselves on the second off day of a 48h off period. Then the following 48h block, i have an intensity day also by itself without an endurance day attached.

Any feedback on this would be appreciated. I wonder if most of the plans look like mine and folks add longer rides at all, or just full send with these lower volume plans is going to be a better bet? I say this in regards to both health and fitness.

9

Are you fueling all these workouts correctly? And maybe electrolytes.

10

My typical fueling for z2/outdoor longer type rides is 40-50g of carbs an hour and LMNT in one of my bottles; and extra packet gets brought just in case. I dont fuel endurance rides that are less than 90 mins. For interval rides it’s usually 60+g carbs an hour depending on the intensity and LMNT in one bottle.

11

I wonder if raising that would not help. With a 280w ftp, you use a lot of carbs. An approximation is your average power for the hour multiplied by the % coming from carbs (depends on the intensity).

If you do a zone 2 at 200w, you consume about 200*50%=100gr carbs/hour.

If you do a high sweetspot (or anything above) at 250w, you consume about 250*100%=250gr carbs/hour. That’s massive. It needs to be fully fueled during the workout, before and after. You may not feel the need during the workout itself because you have reserves that can be used, but you need to replenish the reserves after the workout is done.

12

Interesting… I will definitely look into upping my fuel on some of these intensity rides and see what the result is. I definitely feel better getting in a bigger more complete meal before hand than any early morning ride where my only fuel is immediately before and during; I’m usually left feeling behind the ball in those cases. My current FTP was updated to 286. I have another AI read in a few days.