Two group rides plus TR-prescribed intervals, cannot recover. Need help

Training
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Hello,

Female masters racer here, mid-distance gravel (35 to 60 miles). I am dedicated to a choose-your-own-intensity group ride with friends on Tuesdays (1 to 2 hours) and a harder ride or race on a weekend day (either Saturday or Sunday, 3 to 5 hours).

I have struggled with fatigue and recovery for many years, more so as I get older. I would like to add in structure though, the shortest, easiest intervals possible to improve my tolerance to short bursts in races.

This winter, I followed a 4-day indoor, TR training plan strictly but got fatigued and needed a month of endurance pace to recover. ( I marked the TR rides as hard but the AI seemed to not understand how hard they were for me.) I do not feel fully “back” yet but am starting to ramp up intensity OR distance again (not on the same day).

Am I hoping for the impossible, to add some manageable structured training into my week, to help survive the surges in race, while transitioning to outdoor riding with my friends?

Besides Tu group ride and Sa or Su ride/race, I have We and Fr available to train.

Thanks for any suggestions.

1 Like
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Hi @FrauSwan welcome to the forums

Two group rides may be more stimulation than you can recover and improve from, or it may be not - can you share your calendar or screenshots of the last six weeks?

There is a guide to the responses, have you seen it? I don’t use All Out as much as TR would like.

Can you also share details about your sleep and nutrition, how you fuel your rides in particular?

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Hey @FrauSwan :slight_smile:

Do I have permission to share relevant information from your Calendar to help you figure things out?

If not, you can always contact support@trainerroad.com and we can help you directly!

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Obviously not medically trained but I’m pretty good at digging myself into holes and the big thing I’ve found is low iron levels generally go hand in hand with being unable to recover.

They’re only binary but you can get ferrite test to do at home or I had one recently with the GP as part of the you’re not a 20 year old check the NHS does and unsurprisingly considering how I felt I was only a smidge above anemic. I’m fairly sure mine has it’s roots in over training and under fueling.

Might be something to consider.

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Hard to tell if the riding itself is a cause of fatigue without the calendar. But I have some other questions:

Fatigue is a red flag for nutrition: are you eating enough? Both on and off the bike. For context on long endurance days I need to consume an extra 2500kcal on top of base metabolic rate. On those longer rides, I’m consuming 150g of carbs (50g/hr). Which is considered to be the low end of energy intake nowadays.

The other nutrition question: are you on any specific diets which may benefit from supplementation? Vegans/vegetarians commonly benefit from iron when they’re cyclists. They may also need creatine (fast energy source) as this predominantly comes from meats. I take creatine as a meat eater and think it helped with my ability to manage explosive surges.

How intense are all the rides? Are any of them “easy"? You should be doing more “easy" riding than hard, otherwise you burn out.

Are you taking recovery weeks? You can’t just slog the same thing week in, week out, as (again) you build fatigue.

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Hello JoeX,

Thank you very much for your reply,

There are two screenshots below which show 6 weeks of training I did this winter before I fell apart and was limping along in endurance mode. I also included a screenshot of a typical night of sleep, which is disturbed by wakefulness.

My nutrition is not super - I am vegetarian and struggle to get over 60 to 70g of protein per day, I’m 5’10 and 145lbs. As far as fueling rides, I do not have a plan, I try to eat some gummy candy or a goo every 30 minutes and have a protein shake when I’m home.

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Jan 12 to 31
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dec 22 to jan 11
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Dears Twattsvelo and Firemunki,

Thank you for your comments. I eat enough calories but probably not enough protein, 60-75g/day, as a vegetarian. I am also, like firemunki, a smidge above anemic but iron supplementation does not seem to raise levels. It’s been an ongoing issue for over 10 years without resolution. My 93 year old MIL has better iron levels than I do as a 50yo female. I am a cancer survivor and my doctors say my iron is fine (compared to what they usually see), it’s been frustrating to explain that my iron levels are fine for survival but not great for an athlete.

I eat protein shakes, tofu, bars, cottage cheese, skyr yogurt, but it is hard to get the 100g protein that various dieticians recommend.

Thanks again,

S.

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Dear Caro Gomez-Villafane,

You have permission to share my training plan. I was happy with how I was doing from November 5th to January 30th. On January 31st, I failed my first workout and have not been able to push down very hard on the pedals since… so my traing for the last seven weeks has been short endurance rides indoors or a few rides with friends outdoors at an endurance pace.
So if my training looks totally off the rails since January 31st, it is…

Thanks,

Stephanie

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Can I check: it looks like your training volume when you were feeling OK was about 4-5 hours per week. And thats increased to (by my estimate) 10 hours per week?

I’m wondering if it’s too much volume for you at your current fitness. Could you build volume up THEN add intensity?

Take 4-6 weeks to add the volume. Then replace a couple of rides with high intensity workouts.

Please let me know if I’ve misunderstood!

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Thanks frauswan I would say that if that was too much for you, then I definitely would not be looking at two group rides and two hard sessions indoors per week, I’m afraid. I would start with one group ride - the Tuesday one, then build up indoor training until you can swap in the weekend group ride without the overall load from the week becoming too much.

When you are on the bike, outdoors or indoors, I would recommend having a bidon of water every hour either with sugar/energy powder in it, or gels/goo so that you’re getting over 50g carbs per hour up to as much as you feel like.

I definitely think fuel is the reason you’re getting exhausted at this stage.

If you’ve got some of those group rides in your calendar it might be good to share a couple so we get a sense of the time/intensity/TSS

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Dear JoeX,

Thanks for your follow up comments. The bottle and 50g carbs per hour is an easy-enough addition, I will try that for sure.

And yes, absolutely, I way upped my time on the bike when I started riding outdoors. I was using a 1.5 multiplier for trainer time, so from 4 hours/week indoors, no coasting, to 6 outdoors/week, lots of coasting, seemed manageable. Regardless, I overstepped that.

You asked for a sample Tuesday and Sunday ride, here they are. Both mellow miles. The Sunday ride was mostly rail trail but we were out there a while. Still, 84 watts average, so I thought were increasing hours without increasing intensity and that was okay. (?)

In any case - I see your point that I should do one outdoor ride first and work up to two.

If I had my druthers, I would like to work up to the Tu group ride, Wed easy trainer recovery day, Fr structured intervals to accustom myself to surges (is that like over unders maybe?) and then the group ride or race on the weekend. I work full days M and TH so they are out for training.

Or maybe that is just too much.

The issue is that if I construct my training plan “balanced” and shift the days around to accommodate my outdoor rides, I get four ride days but three to four end up being hard. If I construct my training plan “moderate” I only get three days but historically I have really benefited from a fourth super easy day (like a noodle commute). Adding an extra easy “train now” is certainly an option but if it is not on the calendar I tend to rationalize not riding.

I wish I could get trainer road to allow me to turn one of the hard indoor days into an easy day. I’ve included my current plan which I have not started yet. Even AI thinks it is too hard (all the yellow days) with which I agree. I want to ride easy on one of those hard days indoors.

Thanks again and I appreciate everyone’s input.

Tuesday ride example - mellow fun unstructured hilly miles
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Sunday ride steady low watt ride
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current plan
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That is remarkably well regulated group rides, I was expecting to see a bit of a blow out on the 4.5hrs but you’ve kept that well within the easy ride space!

The execution and survey values in your training don’t look like someone who is exhausted by the training at all. You complete the Very Hard work then do an hour Endurance the next day without problems.

I’d say you want this structure until you feel capable of more:

M - rest
Tu - Easy (change an easy workout to Group Rude)
W - Hard
Th - rest
F - Optional
Sa - Optional
Su - Hard (in plan builder, change a workout to to Group Ride)

Use the Masters toggle and you should get only two hard workouts per week.

A point to note is that this isn’t AI telling you it’s too hard, it’s fatigue management suggesting that you don’t do another hard ride.

Your yellow days are not indicating too much work, are to be expected and you execute endurance rides in them without issue.

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Hello JoeX,

Thanks for your detailed reply! Yeah - as far as completing the training assignments - it is weird how I was humming along doing the TR workouts for three months (Nov through Jan) and then the bottom fell out and I had debilitating fatigue for six weeks. I thought I was rating the exercises pretty honestly but maybe my perception needs to be shifted one tick harder (I rate things at the hardest level only if I feel dizzy and nauseated at the end).

Perhaps the February to mid March fatigue is also because I participated in Veganuary (vegan for the month of January) which seemed like a great idea at the time but my spotty protein consumption suffered. Finally, I was running a sleep deficit in January. I guess posting all the information on this thread allowed me to see how huge a role lifestyle plays.

Duty noted, that is is OK to have yellow days and that they allow for an endurance ride without issue.

Finally, I will use the template you suggest above. I really like the idea of F/Sa as Optional. I will build a “moderate” rather than “balanced” plan because that gives me three days that I can add on to. I like the idea of easy T and structured W because that gives me a nice mini-block and also enough time to recover in case I race on a Saturday.

Thanks very much again and best wishes for your athletic endeavors.

3 Likes
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Hey @FrauSwan :slight_smile: Thank you.

What I am seeing is that in the past month there’s been an emotional and physical toll on your body, so I would be gentle with yourself; as both can take a lot of energy.

That said, I like @JoeX schedule. However, I would make a small edit (personally) because I see your Tuesday Interval days are getting flagged with a Yellow day and turning them into Endurance rides. This doesn’t allow you to have that bit of structure you are wanting if all your Tuesday rides will be endurance workouts.

I would do the following:

M - rest
Tu - Easy (change TR Workout to Group Rude)
W - Hard (make this a rest day too so you can spread out your efforts)
Th - rest
F - Optional (Hard Interval TR Workout; structured training)
Sa - Optional (if you do ride here or race, I would move Fridays interval to Tuesday or better yet, if you can to Thursday).
Su - Hard (change TR Workout to to Group Ride or apply your race)

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Dear Caro,

Thanks very much for your reply!

I’m running into some scheduling constraints because I have long, taxing work days M and Th so I do not schedule training on those days.

On the other hand, I have some free time Wednesdays and all day Fridays.

In light of that, I’m eager to hear your input!

Very best regards,
Stephanie.

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Welcome!

Oh I thought you could per your comment:

Besides Tu group ride and Sa or Su ride/race, I have We and Fr available to train.

But in that case, then I would place your TR Workouts (structured intervals) on Fridays.

I am not sure what you do for work, but if your work is very taxing + trying to do group rides, races and add in structured workouts then it makes sense you are feeling tired and needing weeks to recover after. We may be running into a pickle here, so it may be worth considering what’s most important to you; group rides/races or structured training if your body is telling you it can’t do it all.