Overtraining: Tough it out or Recover?

Another thing that athletes pushing themselves at or close to their limit need to factor in, is ‘recovery’ and very often the questions are how much can my body take, how hard can I push? The key question though is how much recovery do I need, without being considered (by yourself) soft? I’ve often heard that you need to push yourself through immense fatigue to toughen up for an Ironman, but this level of fatigue can lead to overtraining, illness or injury, so one has to be very careful.

Over the past two weeks I encountered one of those ‘slumps’ and very often you try to push through, thinking I need to tough this out. Fortunately, I’ve been training with Heart Rate, Power Meter (bike), Speed and Perceived Exertion all of which are indicators athletes use to look for progress in their training. However, we can also use these indicators to see if we have hit a Plateau or have stopped making progress and an old friend, Ian Rodger, who has been helping Conrad Stoltz has been giving me some training input on my cycling and made a few very interesting observations.

Although the indicators came through in a couple of cycle ‘test’ sessions, the extreme fatigue in my legs had been caused by running much harder and longer than I had been accustomed to. Add the altitude, heat and ‘struggling to sleep’ into the mix and you have a number of additional stressors that can impact your body, over and above the swim, run, biking.

So I was heading for a case of overtraining, something I would have struggled to pick up myself as being an athlete, you are very much in a cocoon and don’t see it coming, as you want to tough it out. It so often takes an independent 3^rd party to witness the signs and to recommend additional rest, so I was grateful not necessarily for the couple of rest days, but for the opportunity for the body to absorb what I had subjected it to, with the knowledge that I will rebound stronger, fitter and fresher.

Spotting the signs is one thing, doing something about it is another. People say we need courage to train hard, but I think the hard training is the easy part, as it goes with the turf ,if you have the time and especially the appropriate training environment like I’m currently experiencing. To me it takes far greater courage for an athlete to tone things down, to back off what they truly believe they need or to change their training programme.

Last year I noted that I had done an extremely good track session (super fast times for me at altitude) and fortunately Paul Wolf, a fellow triathlete and former Biokinetician, who knows sport very well, picked up on it and wrote me a reply warning me of over doing it. That was the perfect mail, with the perfect timing and I backed off, tapered well and ended up having a great race in Las Vegas, whereas I had planned to push for one more week… it could have been disastrous.

This year my main focus is Kona, although I am also racing Las Vegas 70.3, so I am doing a lot of extra training, longer runs, more weekly mileage, longer bike rides, swims, etc, etc. Once you add disturbed sleeping patterns, high altitude, heat and stronger training partners into the mix, you have training stresses that you are not accustomed to, you are highly motivated and have all the time in the world, so you are pushing as best you can.

So a week ago Sunday I had just concluded my best ever training week (see http://ironmansa.com/2012/08/27/key-training-block/), 100km of running including a super fast track session followed the next day by a long run, plus biking and swimming. I thought things were going great and was ready for the next week (just gone by). Then I did a light Fartlek session, followed by a swim on Tuesday and a tough bike workout in the late afternoon and sent the data back to Ian, who immediately recognised the HR was higher than expected for the session and the Watts I was pushing, so he had me back off on Wednesday.

Thursday was another test/tough bike session on Jamestown Hill. Once again the data was not what it should be so a total day off on Friday and must be honest was glad to say goodbye to that 120km ride, as my body was tired. Saturday was a relatively easier day, followed by a 160km ride yesterday at a very good average for me, so I think I’m getting back to full strength, I think I’ve absorbed the hard workloads, I think the recovery has kicked in and now we can look forward to the next 7 weeks of preparation for Kona.

I would recommend that you think of your body as you would a sponge used for washing cars, if you use the sponge regularly every day, day after day, it may lose it’s shape or elasticity and need to be replaced (in the body’s case it may need some rest and recovery or it gets ill/injured). If you use the sponge sparingly, it almost always returns to it’s normal shape and is ready for another session. The challenge is finding the balance.

As an experienced athlete and coach, you know that you will experience 2 or 3 slumps in a 12 week training period, especially when long distance travel (time zones), altitude and heat are added into the mix. I experienced a mini one in the first week of arriving, a full blown one this past week, now I need to keep an eye out for the next one, unless I keep the training nice and balanced.

The good news is that I had this ‘extreme fatigue’ in and out of my body a good fortnight before Las Vegas, so hopefully I may be on an upward curve going into Las Vegas, which is what we as athletes are always aiming for. Hold Thumbs!!