Managing Fatigue, Part 1
Managing fatigue is the key to efficient improvement in your fitness. Inducing fatigue, by training, stimulates your body to repair the damage done in training plus add a bit extra as your body recognizes the fatigue you induced hurt it, so it wants to build back a little bit stronger. This cycle of induce fatigue > recover > induce fatigue > recover is what builds fitness, like climbing a flight of stairs one step at a time.
Training makes you slow, recovery (kitchen and bedroom) makes you fast.
This sounds stupid, but is very true. Think about this: you start a two-hour interval workout or ride with some climbs in it, by the end of the ride/workout you are performing at a lower level. If i go out and do a 20-minute climb 3 times my power may be 300w on the first one, 290w on the second one and 270w on the third one, no surprises here. The training is literally breaking down muscle cells and using my glycogen stores (the sugar/energy stored in my muscles). This training is literally making me slower by each interval/climb.
The magic happens when I get home and eat some food (ideally the correct food) and go to sleep. The food hopefully includes a lot of protein that is literally the building blocks for the body to rebuild those broken down cells in the legs, and build them back stronger and more robust. The carbohydrates you consume are going to rebuild your glycogen stores, so your body has fuel to use while you ride. When you go to sleep, your body will release some hormones (growth hormone and others) that stimulate your body to repair those cells that you broke down during your workout, and build them back stronger.
This time in the kitchen (the food) and in the bedroom (the sleep) is crucial for recovery. This is what makes you stronger. The training induces the potential fitness gains and the recovery actually rebuilds you so that you have a higher level of fitness.
What happens if I train almost every day and do not let my body recover? The short answer, your legs will suck. You get better at what you do, it is pretty simple. If you do a large volume of training at a mediocre intensity level (because you are always fatigued) you will get REALLY good at being mediocre. I have yet to meet someone whose goal was to become really mediocre.
Think about this scenario for a minute:
I have been training a lot but i am not getting any faster, my legs just always feel tired. I must be out of shape, I am going to train even more and not skip any workouts. Wow, I am still just not getting better, as a matter of fact I think I am getting slower than i was a few weeks ago. I am sort of not sleeping that great either, i am just tired. I took a day off, but i am still riding like junk, so i am not overcooked, i took ONE day off, I must just keep training. Man, my times and power are not that good, not as good as I was a few months ago. Maybe I am sick?
We have all done this, some people do it for decades and assume this is how one is supposed to feel and ride. What has happened is you are not recovering, and keep training and training. Now all of your workouts are at 85% intensity. If you do all your workouts at 85% for a few weeks/months, your 85% will now become your new 100%. You get good at what you do, if you do a lot of training at mediocre levels you become mediocre. In this situation you become overtrained/tired AND out of shape all at once, as a bonus you start doing your head in because you are tired and sucking, so it is just not fun.
We have all done this, most cyclists tend to be a bit obsessive compulsive (can be a good thing) and that can lead to this. Some people do this for so many years, they know no difference.
How do you fix this? This is what I have done when this happens to myself, I take 5 days OFF – don’t ride, eat anything I like and don’t think about the bike. Then I do a week of training, but maybe 75% volume and maybe some group rides or basic fun stuff (gravel?). Then test the waters and see how the legs feel, likely they are better than they have been for a while.
I have seen many cyclists over the years that were always riding a ton and pretty strong, then they had an accident (busted collar bone or something) and were forced to take a few weeks off the bike and train on zwift or the trainer, just low volume and high intensity – and they come back STRONGER.
This happened to me. I love to ride my bike, I like 90 mile rides and 300 miles a week, I just enjoy it. When I was young, I could do this and win races. Now at age 50 that volume does not allow me to do my quality training (trainer intervals/track) at the intensity required to get fast. Last Fall I had hip surgery, was on crutches and off my bike for 4 weeks – longest time since 8th grade. When I started back, I did a TON of intervals on my trainer (Roger’s zwift workouts) and then jumped directly on the track. My hip recovery did not allow me to do much volume, so I kept it to 150 miles a week max. I showed up at the first race of the year in January and won, then won the second race of the year in February. I went on to win 9 races this year, 5 seconds and 3 thirds – 17 top 3’s out of 22 races. I kept my mileage under 180 miles a week all year. After 35 years of riding, I learned something new, and it paid off.
The volume of fatigue you want to induce will vary depending on your immediate goals, as well as the time of year (training phase you are in).
If you are training for a gravel race or long endurance event your workouts may be targeting efforts at 65-75% intensity for a longer duration, maybe you need to do 3 hours at 200w average. You can do a fair amount of volume and carry a lot of fatigue, the fatigue may make your legs hurt, but you can still do your workouts as they only require 75% intensity. That is why guys doing 12 or 24 hour mtn bike races or giant gravel events will do 400-500 mile weeks.
On the other hand, if you are 15 years old and training for track nationals, your longest event may be 12 minutes long and require a handful of 20 second efforts at FULL GAS. If you did 400 miles a week, you would NEVER have legs fresh enough to do 20 second efforts in training at any quality, thus you would get slower. You would want to go into your key workouts each week with enough freshness in your legs to execute the intense efforts at FULL GAS and gain speed. You get better at what you do, do them fast, and you get fast, do them slow and you get slow…
During the season, and year over year as you develop and get older, you do change focus and rotate from carrying more or less fatigue. Building up the ability to carry more and more fatigue is part of long term development, but you need to keep developing along the way while you do it – not just pure fatigue without improving year after year.
So on one end of the spectrum we have endurance gravel racers doing 400-500 miles a week and on the other end we have match sprinters doing 200-500 meter efforts. Likely you fall between these two extremes for most of the year. Throughout the year, I recommend looking at your next upcoming goal (your “A” race) and defining what abilities you need to perform best.
Say your goal is Track Nationals:
You need some fundamental endurance/aerobic power – not as much as say a road race with a big climb in it, but you need enough that you can sit in a points race and have enough in the tank to do the sprints AND not get dropped afterward and possibly to cover an attack and take a lap. You also need some top end power to sprint for 15-30 seconds every few minutes. So you don’t need as much pure aerobic endurance as you would for a road race, but you need more top end power/speed, though not as much as a match sprinter that may do a single 20 second effort then rest for 1 hour. In this situation you can build aerobic power/endurance further out from the event and carry a bit more fatigue, then as the event nears closer you can let that endurance slip a bit to freshen up your legs, so you can do the intensity at a higher level to develop that top end speed/power. Pulling back this endurance is tough for some people, they hate to “give it up”. The first few weeks you “give it up” and do the intensity focus you will usually gain power in your aerobic endurance as you are a bit fresher and the top end work does stimulate this to some extent, and definitely helps slow the loss of it.
Say your goal is Valley of the Sun:
This is a 3 day stage race with a time trial (25 minutes), a road race with a 10 minute climb and a short crit. This will require more endurance and allow you to carry a bit more fatigue/volume until closer to the day of the event. It will not require multiple full gas efforts, it will be more determined on steady aerobic power. Building up your max 20 minute power would likely be the focus for the months before, though as you get closer to the event, you would still pull back your volume so that you can do those efforts with more freshness in your legs and push that power number higher. The road race also requires one giant push to the line at the top of the climb, so you would also want to do some 1 minute to 30 second efforts to sharpen up for that, tossing those in when you decrease your overall volume and your legs are a bit fresher. Remember, the top end work requires less fatigue in your legs to maximize them.
Next up will be how to organize your season/workouts to manage your fatigue and get the best improvement, basically how to put what we have learned here into practice with your own training.