Giving up is something I don't like to do. However, everyone has a breaking point. I reached mine in January after another lackluster race.
I pitched the rest of my season, determined to take some time off, ride for fun and rediscover my passion while attempting to explain how a cyclist with more than 4,000 miles in his legs could have the worst season of his life.
It wasn't until I read this April 24 posting, "Fatigue Indicators'' http://www.trainingbible.com/joesblog/blog.html on Joe Friel's blog, that I understood what happened.
I was pretty sure I overtrained -- getting sick twice in 21 weeks sort of indicates that -- but that wasn't the complete answer because I did reduce my volume in November and December without a boost in fitness. No, the answer was deeper than that.
The main thing I got from Friel's post is this: It's not just the overtraining that does you in; it's what it prevents you from doing. Mainly, being able to ride enough in the high training zones -- lactate threshold, Vo2Max, anaerobic capacity -- to develop racing fitness.
I was a victim of the Zone 3 Syndrome.
This is the no-man's land of training. And I was living in it during my racing season. When you're afflicted with the Zone 3 Syndrome, you struggle to get your power and heart rate at or near the lactate threshold because you're tired. Any reaction to this other than a diet of recovery rides prolongs this condition. When you can't train sufficiently in these higher levels, you can't develop race fitness.
Every "hard'' ride, in effect, becomes a Level 3 Tempo ride. Not hard enough to induce the desired training effect and too hard to allow for necessary recovery. It's an endless spiral.
I researched some of my WKO+ data and it shows I spent too much time in Zones 2 and 3 and very little in the higher zones. Specifically, during my four-week Base 3 and eight-week Build periods -- the time when you should be developing LT, Vo2Max and anaerobic capacity -- I spent only 1.5 percent of my road training at LT, 0.8 percent at Vo2Max and 1 percent at anaerobic capacity. I spent 15.4 percent in Level 3 Tempo and 43.7 at Level 2 Endurance.
I think I'm on to something.
While I train with power on the road, I don't have a power meter on my off-road bike. So, researching my average heart rate numbers showed I was consistently 5+ beats lower than my LT average. My tired body was trying to tell me that I needed rest, but my Type-A personality was determined to "fight through'' this dead phase.
It all looks so clear now, outside the fog of training.
My advice to anyone out there who has suffered through the Zone 3 Syndrome would be to hire a coach to prevent this. Like most, I'm great at giving advice but bad at following my own. A coach likely would've seen what I was doing and corrected it long before I dug my hole. However, Friel's athlete fell victim to it, so nothing's guaranteed. But, Friel noticed the warning signs early enough to salvage his season.
I'm going to begin my '09-10 annual training plan May 4. Rest assured, I'll be following this advice: When it's time to ride slow, ride really, really slow. When it's time to ride hard, ride really, really hard.
