[Closed] Symptoms of over training?

I think i've not been in too disimilar a boat this year and for me it's not the ammount of training but the big one, mine was a 65miler on the Ridgeway and then back straight on it again the next day.. Yours may have been your marathon.

I'm currently resting up for the SDW in a couple of weeks now, well, trying to anyway. But keep getting the Zwift race urges... I'll be doing some cycling for sure, but less than usual and less intensity.

That sounds like a lot to me. I seem to do less and less and feel worse and worse these days.

Are you measuring your activities? I.e. Heart rate. I realise I used to be going at a higher intensity than I realised - just what I was used to from MTB. Have toned it down, but tolerances seem so fine and it's really hard to find the balance between being ok and being run down, the latter seems to be the common result after 2-3 weeks however hard I try (or more, the easier I try).

Overtraining tends to creep up on you, it's not a sudden thing. The increased heart rate and slowing times are typical symptoms.

So, yes, rest is what you need.

You don't say how old you are. At 60 I've found in the last few years that recovery is taking me longer than when I was young. I'm having to choose my battles now.

Also, don't discount work / family life as a contributing factor.

It sounds like you have a pretty busy week. I suspect the marathon has pushed you over the edge.
Whether that training load is sutainable for you will depend how you've built up to it etc. - I know I'd break myself with that amount of running, but I'm not running fit at the moment.
I do a similar amount, but more cycling biassed, and benefit from the odd rest week - usually work or family life dictated.
So yeah, take a rest. Don't take the trainers or bike on your next holiday, chill out, eat loads.

Hard to say without details of the intensity of each session. In itself it doesn't look like a massive amount of training. Unless each activity, including commute is done flat out?
Also, again it depends on where your fitness has been at over the years. If you're a very fit person for the last decade and your 30 years old, then again, your training doesn't look excessive.
8 minute miles may be easy for you, or it may be your "race pace". If its race pace, then that needs to drop for the commute miles. Same as on the bike, you only need one or two hard intensity sessions per week. If you're riding and running at max pace each session, then not only are you going to over train but you'll also stagnate as well.
I know this well, when racing when I first purchased my Wattbike I was doing 3 HIIT sessions per week (which can be similar to a 45/50 minutes commute if smashing it). Then I'd race one day a week and also do a long club ride (but generally an easy ride - apart from smashing it up hills). I noticed that my legs started to feel "blocked", I'd feel strong at the start of a long climb but mid way through even at Tempo I'd be empty. My FTP then started to drop, not by much, but in tests it was noticeable, but it was more the lack of energy mid ride that was the evidence I was overdoing it.

I think I went through something similar at the end of April, didn't think I'd been doing anything spectacular, but a combination of commuting and two or three longish rides in relatively quick succession just mounted up, combined with a family holiday (e.g. one of the most stressful events known to man) I ended up completely flattened by the end of the month.

It spurred me to get a heart rate monitor and actually start training properly, am now on a standard polarised routine of mostly easy Z2 work combined with one or two sessions on the turbo. Feeling better so far but it's only been two weeks!

Would recommend booking a couple of hours with a coach if you can afford it, basically tell them what it is you do and anything you're trying to train for. My guy also explained nutrition a bit better to me, made me realise how little I was eating/drinking on longer harder rides.

Are you measuring your activities?

Yep, all measured (running watch with HR and Garmin 520 for HRM on the bike)

You don’t say how old you are.

39. And as fit as I've ever been on my life, in theory at least.

Also, don’t discount work / family life as a contributing factor.

Interesting. Work is nuts at the moment and there's some fun and games going on at home too. This may well be a factor.

8 minute miles may be easy for you, or it may be your “race pace”.

Depends on the race! 8 minute miles is about 90 seconds slower than 5k pace and between 30 and 45 seconds slower then half marathon pace. So it's not hanging around but it's not fast either. The bike commutes are very easy bar a 7 minute hill in the middle that is hard work irrelevant of how fast you go up it!

Also, again it depends on where your fitness has been at over the years.

I've been "fit" for 2 or 3 years, prior to that I was fit/fat in that I could ride 100 miles on the road bike but couldn't run to the end of the road and I definitely had a gut!

you need a rest day in that schedule. drop one of the midweek runs and use that to get the train in, so you can swap in and out your work clothes, towel etc

Looking at someone's routine to see if it's over training or not is sometimes insufficient. Some people need little rest, others struggle with too many sessions. Different people need different volumes to achieve the same performance.

Besides MTB, I'm into CrossFit/strongman, which is a balancing act if you want to get any good at it. I'll do CrossFit and strongman stuff about 5 times a week, MTB 2 or 3 times. You basically learn to listen to your body, overtraining will generally start to express itself as difficulty to recover, slow to no progress, successive appearance of small injuries and low energy levels.

Also common is to start saving yourself today for tomorrow's training. Sometimes it's better to go 3 to 4 times a week at 100% rather than 5 or 6 times at 70%. Quality always trumps quantity

Pretty sure theres an app for that.

Measures your morning hr and tells you if you are over training. Someone on here mention it the other day.

Could have been this one : https://www.mpower-fitness.co.uk/how-to-use-an-app-to-track-overtraining-and-state-of-health/

Try and read some of the stuff by Dr Richard Budgett and see how it fits your situation. Mrs saw him back in 90s when she got properly broken (and he definitely saw the contribution of general life stuff as a significant factor). Catch it early or it is a very long slow recovery (years) if you properly grind yourself into the floor.

Measures your morning hr and tells you if you are over training. Someone on here mention it the other day.

Possibly me, the app I use is called ithlete:

http://myithlete.com

I find it very useful for keeping an eye on how well recovered I am and tweaking training accordingly. It measure something called HRV and assesses your overall recovery / well being, tracks various factors - stress, sleep, training intensity, etc.

Fwiw, you might want to consider having a recovery day every week and an easy week every three or four weeks - depends on what works for you and how hard you're training.

The thing I've found is that it's the intense stuff that really hits your recovery rather than volume and I tend not to stack two hard interval workouts on consecutive days, but as someone says above, people vary in their ability to recover.

How's your sleep btw? It's the single most significant aid to recovery. If you're not sleeping well, you tend not to recover as well as you should. Finding it hard to sleep is also, from vague memory, one of the classic symptoms of overtraining.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2386336/good-to-go-book-christie-aschwanden-questions-recovery

Training for what?

(Others on here will have a far better idea of how to structure training building to a race/event/target whatever. Which for many a marathon would be. And then just do it for fun for a bit.)

I've so far managed to avoid over training despite having a schedule not too different from yours. I train for long distance triathlon and Ironman events, including commuting to work. I often don't have a day off completely, but monitor what I do carefully. I can recommend using training peaks as a good monitor of fitness and fatigue. Set up your zones properly and watch out for your fatigue numbers getting too high-end while watching fitness creep up. Record everything, even low intensity commutes as it all adds up to TSS values. I also use the metrics sometimes to keep daily track of weight, sleep, stress, health - so helpful to see your overall health and feeling.

I’d highly recommend an extended break at least once a year to enable you to step back from it all and allow you to see how over obsessed with training all the time you’ve become. We’re all the same so I’m not having a go. I speak from experience.
Once you’ve had a good few weeks off or even months if that’s what you need, then you can return to training in a more measured and balanced way to help ensure you enjoy your hobby.
My tip is to treat learning how to recover as seriously as learning how to train. Stress + recovery = adaptation. We’re great at ladling on the stress but terrible at balancing it with recovery. Podcasts by Simon Ward are a great resource for learning. Perhaps start with his interview with Dr Phil Maffetone.

Coincidentally, the latest Outside Online podcast is a look at overtraining syndrome and quite an interesting listen. One takeaway is that for normal people - as opposed to professional athletes - the accumulation of 'other stuff' in life is a major issue.

An elite athlete will train harder than your or I, but can also sleep for longer, recover better, fuel in a really structured way etc, because they quite often will have very else in their life to focus on. Contrast with someone with a family, work commitments, etc.

I do wonder if the OP is simply not recovered from the marathon 3-4 weeks ago. It used to take me around six to eight weeks to get over a 24 solo. Anyway... in case it's interesting for anyone:

http://podcast.outsideonline.com/OutsidePodcast

I know when I was struggling with a cholic-y baby, my heart rate was through the roof at times and I would have to go into another room just to try and calm down. Not a nice place to be in and thankfully the worst has passed (he's approaching terrible twos but the tantrums are more comical than stressful).

Work also, I've spent the last few weeks trying to disengage slightly so that I wouldn't be losing sleep from stress etc. I think the boss took notice and I seem to have flown under the radar for new projects for a couple of weeks, overall feeling a lot better for it.

But sleep, sleep and more sleep. No more nice little dram of whisky before bed, trying to reduce screen time, read a bit of a book etc. Also if there's nothing better to do I'll just go to bed a bit earlier!