What follows is a cautionary tale on overtraining. If you ever plan on racing a triathlon or scheduling any competition that requires you to train for it, keep this in the back of your mind when you’re structuring your training program. Sometimes, the things we do we think are healthiest, are actually the most harmful.
It’s June, I’ve been training for my 1st half ironman race since November and the race is just over a month away. Despite six months of training I haven’t been getting faster. I’m sluggish on the run, dull on the bike, and not looking forward to swimming (though I rarely look forward to swimming). Actually, I’m not really looking forward to working out at all.
I check my training logs and notice some other irregularities, like training MORE despite sleeping LESS. Not exactly a recipe for training success.
There’s a saying I’ve heard before that goes something like, “If you think you’re overtraining you probably are.”
Well, that wasn’t good enough for me. Plus I’m just an amateur athlete, overtraining syndrome is only for professional athletes…right?
I go online and search overtraining, then overtraining and triathlon. I read about 20 different articles. I’m obsessive. I need to know why I’m struggling so much.
Two articles in particular were most helpful.
The first was Phil Maffetone’s article The Overtraining Syndrome. I use Maffetone’s fitness test in to gauge my aerobic fitness. The MAF test is an objective fitness test to assess your aerobic development. If you’re improving there should be a decrease in the amount of time it takes to complete a specicfic distance at a specific heart rate (using a heart rate monitor).
For example, warm up and run three miles (at a running track for the most accurate results) at a heart rate of 150bpm and record each mile time. Then after three to four weeks of training do the same workout and record the mile times again. If you’re improving your times per mile will be faster than times from the previous workout, at the same heart rate. (I’m oversimplifying this, if you want to learn more about how this works check out Phil’s article’s here and here.)
My times during this workout stayed the same from April to May and got worse from May to June. Maffetone suggests that this is a key sign of overtraining.
I’m overtraining though? Not likely. I’m Invincible!
Maffetone also suggests that you can actually perform well in a race despite overtraining, which also happened to me. I had a nice performance at the Bassman Triathlon on May 1st, my first race in almost two years. That race took a lot out of me, and looking at my training logs I didn’t really take the time to recover, running seven miles the next day, biking 35 the next and running 10 miles two days later.
Overtraining? Me? I’m still not convinced.
The other helpful article was this one from USA Triathlon. It provides the largest list of symptoms I found related to overtraining.
Of the twenty symptoms they listed I have fifteen of them…
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Persistent Increase and muscle soreness even with sandard/easy to moderate workouts
Slower than normal recovery of Heart Rate after a hard effort
Lingering muscle and joint pain
GI problems — Specifically diarrhea or constipation
Minor abrasions heal slowly
“heaviness” or “sluggish feeling” that lasts for more than 24 hours after standard workouts
A decrease in physical performance, particularly during standard workouts
Loss of joy for competiton
Desire to quit
Loss of general enthusiasm
Easily irritable or heightened impatience or annoyed by otherwise normal interactions with others
Loss of ability to concentrate for long periods of time
Loss of appetite
Loss of Libido
Changes in sleep habits or inability to get quality sleep or unable to sleep.
Upon realizing the amount of symptoms of overtraining my body was harboring I decided finally…that I needed another opinion.
I ask my girlfriend to read one of the articles to see if it sounds like me. I wait patiently while she reads it.
She finishes reading and says nothing. “Thoughts?” I ask.
“Yea, especially the sleep thing…and you’ve been really moody lately too.”
“I have?”
“Yea, complaining a lot more and stuff.”
She’s right. Damn.
What You MIGHT Learn about Overtraining From Me
I wrote the story above because I wanted you to see my thought process. I want you to see how despite my body doing almost everything it can to get me to rest, my mind still needed to read 20 articles and ask someone else to be convinced.
Sometimes we don’t realize things that are extremely obvious. Focus by definition can blind you from seeing other things. My focus on training for this race, took my focus away from the fact that my overall health was declining.
Although, at some level I did sense this coming and I tried to scale back because I knew I was on a slippery slope, but with a race coming up it’s not easy. You want to be prepared for the race, and you’re not going to be prepared if you don’t put in the miles. You rationalize to yourself that you’re better off doing the miles even though you’re not feeling great.
Dropping out of a race you’ve been training months for is hard decision to make. It’s hard to imagine the pressure a sponsored pro athlete like Ryan Hall would feel when deciding whether or not they’re ready to race. Hall decided not to run in the 2010 Chicago marathon after he was feeling a little flat a month or so before the event.
I’m not anywhere close to that competitive level, and unlike him, my livelihood doesn’t rest on racing. Still it was difficult for me to admit that I’m not going to be able to race. I have a new level of respect for athletes that make a decision not to race when they’re not ready.
I wrote what you “MIGHT” learn in the heading, because when it happens to you, you’ll likely shrug off my experience with overtraining and rationalize that it doesn’t apply to you, just like I did with everything I read.
It is possible to overtrain if you’re an amateur athlete. It’s probably even more likely for an amateur than a professional. Pro athletes live the sport, amateur athletes do sport as a hobby and work jobs, have kids to watch, and other variables a lot of top pro’s don’t have to worry about.
After all, overtraining really is just under recovering, and if you’re squeezing training between dozens of other obligations then you have way less time than the pro level racer to rest and recover.
If you’re training for any competition and think you might be experiencing overtraining syndrome Ask yourself what you would do if you didn’t have this competition/race/performance coming up.
I didn’t get a high level of clarity on what to do until I asked this question of myself. For me the answer came fast. “Rest.”
If you’re not doing what’s best for you now because of some future event, re-evaluate.
Where did I go wrong?
I think back to October, around the time I first committed to doing the Providence race. I did a fifty mile bike ride on a cold morning. My friend and I got to the ride late, and we didn’t start until about 20-25 minutes after everyone else. We joked about how cold it was and how maybe we’d just ride home, but there was a certain lightness to our attitudes that day. We ended up passing every other person riding that day and when we got back to the bike shop we waited about 10 minutes until the next person finished up. We really crushed the ride that day and for me it was almost effortless.
At the time I was only training cycling 3 days/week about 6-7 hours a week and I showed a lot of improvement. Once I committed to the Half Ironman, all of a sudden I threw 25 miles a week of running and a couple swims on top of that to be “ready” for the race.
Now I’ll be “getting ready” to watch it as a spectator. 
Now I know (obviously) you need to build up to a heavier workload instead of just throwing several hours of training on top of what you’re already doing.
I “knew” that before, but you don’t truly know something until you practice it. 
My Training and Racing Plans
The plan now is to take a week off from training. The only exercise I’ll be doing for the next week will be some light walking . After that I’ll re-evaluate and make a decision about what I’m going to do next.
My two big races I wanted to do coming into this year were the Providence Half-Ironman, and the Hartford Marathon. I’m dropping out of Providence. It’s possible I can be ready for Hartford, but I’ll have to re-evaluate as it comes closer.
Thanks for Reading
