Saturday, April 14, 2007

Friday the 13th

Good Luck, Bad Luck You Decide

It’s 2 am on Friday the 13th, I am up and out of bed ready for my next series of triple long rides. I am out the door at 2:30 am, riding my mountain bike through the fresh deposit of yet another spring nor’easter. The plan is three consecutive 16 hour rides.

It’s fun riding on quite back roads in the fresh snow, but I’m not pushing myself. I am tired and I am just putting in the time. I start thinking about my training over the last month or so and I suspect that I am in a state of over training.

Here are the symptoms I have observed:

- Waking up tired in the morning. I am in bed by 9, up at 6 and I am still tired in the morning.

- No superman days, you know those days after you have recovered from a big workout. You can’t go hard enough. No matter how hard you push it, your legs respond with “give me more.” I haven’t had one of those days for 5 or 6 weeks.

- Feeling ill, for the last 2 weeks, my stomach has been bothering me and I have had a reoccurring bout of the Alabama quick step.

- Poor attitude, I have not had much passion for my workouts for several weeks.

- Not able to finish my planned workouts. Since the HOS500 I have put in all my scheduled time, but I haven’t done any specialty workouts (hill repeats, interval, and speed work.)

- Inability to get my heart rate as high a normal.

- Slow recovery, I look at my training diary and it is taking me longer to bounce back from big efforts.

So to make a long story short (too late) I decided to pull the plug on this weekend’s workout. I finished up with 5 hours on Friday morning and will do a couple of shorter rides, but I think the risk of overtraining is a greater risk than missing these long rides.

I haven’t missed a single workout so far, the base is built. In a month, I will do the final triple 300 mile rides, but what I do between now and then is still up in the air. I may feel fine and return to my original schedule or I might follow a reduced schedule for the next month.

posted by Brett Walker @ 9:54 AM   1 comments

1 Comments:

At 2:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

First, this is second hand. My wife has been running for 6 years with a goal to run a marathon by the time she was 40. Well, she did, and she qualified for Boston, the rest is history. Did that a few times, won her age group at the Austin/Motorolla marathon and most recently won a small (400) Hyannis marathon as the first woman. Read, she is quietly competitive!

She too gets burned out and has done a great deal to diversify her training to avoid over training. Swimming, biking, sprints, yoga, pilates, medicine ball. It is mind bogling how many other things she does but it all goes to support her running and seems to work.

With all the BrettBlogs we read, it is always ride ride ride. "We" wonder if 100% bike causes burnout? Anywho, I am in awe of Brett's accomplishments. And, although she does not know it, I'd volunteer her for dinner and a chat anytime because she just loves talking about training and the challenges it presents!

You're awesome Brett! A good book. With Winning in Mind by Lanny Bassham. Shooting centric but he focuses on athelete mental training. Good read and can loan you our copy.

Jud in Hopkinton

 

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