How do I know if I'm training too much?

Question

What are the signs that suggest that perhaps I am hitting my volume capacity in my cycling training?

Answer 1

Your mental resorts might be defined by intervals where you feel that you cannot relax during the interval sessions. Overreaching or overtraining may cause issues such as lower motivation and focus, irritability, insomnia or excessive lactic acid build-up which causes muscles to cramp, slower heart rates, increased fatigue, or no progression in strength over long periods. In every discipline of training, one should ward off or listen in to the signals that one’s body is sending so that one can modulate their training volume accordingly.

Comments

How do i know when I've hit that volume? It's when my wife gives me that look.

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listen to your body and obey it!! for short term and long term goals

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I'm somewhat new to cycling, having been a swimmer for around five years now.  I find that I actually max out on volume much quicker than intensity in cycling. I think that since I swim short events, usually the 100, 200 and 500 short course yards, I,m used to the cardiovascular load of intensity, but my body just still isn't used to the long-term stress of hours of biking. I just don't do those kinds of high volume workouts when I swim, so for me, too many long endurance rides will leave me fatigued.

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Thanks for the evidence. What about Sweetspot training for folks like me with less than 7 hours per week training?

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I suppose this explains why I feel like crap after completing a 31 Days of July challenge (1 hour, every day in July). While I've learned how to not completely murder myself doing this challenge and this year I ended the month not feeling too bad, but I still lost a lot of motivation to ride in the months since. I will definitely consider some of the Training Peaks courses.

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According to my feeling i would say, nowdays my 71kg body tolerates burning total of 4500kcal per day completely without recoverydays in zone 2. But by adding intensity this looks completely different

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thanks for sharing. what would you say that is a good way to measure, besides feeling? using CTL to measure the workload and fatigue? i basically ride for the fun (or addiction:P) and i just want to be sure that im not doing too much. too less is not happening anyways :P. thanks

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You'll know when either volume or intensity (or both) is too high when you get tendinopathy on patellar tendon or quadriceps tendons, or both. That's the worst way to learn tuning training the hard way ;)