Touched on this in some other topics thought I’d post here.
At 51, this has been my most consistent year cycling as I’ve had more time to devote to it since Autumn last year. I’ve also done some (limited) structured training. Only year I did more had a three week tour in it but even the lead up to that was slower (I’ve pretty much avoided winter riding in the U.K. previously)
But after a few longer events and rides, which pushed me a bit, I seem to be in a plateau position where my load is low but each time I push I seem to get strain indicators. To some degree I agree with the Garmin and feel a bit strained. HRV is trending down ish over past three months. RHR upwards. I feel stronger but doesn’t seem to translate to ftp.
Also I was without power meter for a month or so right in among that plateau (thanks to my 4iiii failure) but now back with the Assiomas.
Any tips or anything obvious from my graphs?
What do I listen to? How to try and push through?
Or maybe it’s impossible to tell from this info?!
No specific event now, I just want to keep getting fitter.
I’m also doing a fair bit of yoga and bodyweight/free weight excercises but that’s less about cycling and more for quality of life and longevity (hopefully) after a couple of injuries and I feel so much better with both of them.
It will be much more helpful if you can offer more detailed information about your workout, such as activities of recent weeks, how long do you train per-week, per-day, rest day and rest week.
I don’t know whether the strain feeling shows up just after a few weeks
of high volume riding. If so, it might be a signal of overtraining. The HRV and RHR trends indicate overtraining. Usually, a rest week should be arranged after several weeks of hard training. With enough rest, the improvements of FTP can be seen in cycling.
Have some good rest, do some easy, short riding and see what happens after that.
Hard to summarise it all. I was aiming for an easier week every fourth week, but depending on weather, illnesses etc it varied a bit. But often the harder weeks were easier too for similar reasons.
Often riding 4-5 times a week, averaging 5-10hrs a week and 50-100mi. Generally pyramid zones overall. A few more in theshold with some harder vo2max, threshold, sweet spot efforts of various types.
According to Garmin vo2 max dropped a bit and power feels somewhat stagnated.
I know I was getting a bit undisciplined- letting zone 2 rides turn into zone 2 plus sprints and faster miles here and there but overall my total effort was similar. But I think it was the longer rides that most affected me. Also there was a bunch of bad sleep (child related) which didn’t help.
Maybe it’s just too much data (or data in the wrong hands) - previous years I would have jumped to even longer rides with way less fitness and buildup, suffer a bit, and just move on.
I’ll try and screenshot some summary data but I think I might just take a week or two off for now.
Edit
Bottom bars of my main screenshot graphs are weekly load.
Here are a couple of summary pages for the year to date and latest month.
From your screenshots from your fitness tab it would appear that your rHR is on the rise while your HRV is decreasing. Generally not a great sign. However, it’s how your 7d average is in relation to your normalised band that matters. See the two charts I have screenshot below. Search for and add these to your fitness tab instead of the rHR and HRV charts you currently have.
You want to ensure your 7d HRV average stays within your normalised band. See where your 7d average is in relation to normalised and post up the screenshots
Decreasing HRV / increasing rHR is likely a sign of stress on the body. This stress is not necessarily training related but training load needs to be considered when trying to reduce stress on the body. Stress could be anything from seasonal, to work stress, to life stress, illness and so on so forth.
Thanks @nasatt
When you say ‘search for and add’ I’m not quite sure what you mean? Where do I do that?
I do have an average band in my graph now that I just added from the dropdown list.
My Garmin is flagging low or unbalanced for HRV 7 day average, and also strained / maintaining despite a low load. It’s kind of not popped back into productive for a while, it seems to be stuck on maintaining at best. While this has happened in the past for shorter period, I feel like whenever I do something harder/longer I’m back into strained despite the lower volume, and can’t progress.
I did also have a big party this weekend which is never great for health data, but this trend has been going on well before that….
On the fitness tab, up at the top, under options you’ll see ‘Custom Charts’. On the bottom of that pop out you’ll see a magnifying glass beside the word charts. Click that and search ‘resting heart rate rhr’ and add that chart
Are you in Northern or Southern hemisphere? Drop in HRV if you’re in Southern Hemisphere could be seasonal
It seems nothing wrong with the training, mostly zone 1 and zone 2. It’s not a problem that do a little bit sprint or acceleration in your zone 2 rides.
You’ve mentioned that longer rides most affected you. I wonder whether the diet and recovery are affecting you. A common suggestion is to eat and drink enough during long rides, even with low-intensity training and eat carbohydrates within two hours after the riding, 1-2g per kg, depending your weight. Also, drink some water after the riding. There’s no exact amount for drinking, one standard is to pay attention to your urine, which should be light-colored and clear. Yellow urine indicated dehydration. Besides, daily diet should also be well with diversity.
Another thing you could try is to follow your body feeling and release your mental stress. Forget about data or training plan for some days. If you feels good, go out do some riding. If you feels tired and less motivated, have some rest then. It’s quite common to have some bad periods during your training progress.
You sound and look like me.
I’ve started taking rest more seriously and taking more days off (2 days a week). I’m also doing my easy/long days easier whilst keeping my volume up (13-15 hrs/week). Ive been doing this more a coupeleof months and everything is now going in the right direction. I’ve also been doing a lot more walking (trying for 60-90 minutes through the day)
Not sure if I’m plotting the sane as you - this is what I had (I haven’t delved much into these sub-graphs as I wasn’t 100% sure what I was doing and didn’t see many examples anywhere).
This definitely resonates with me. I find I feel a bit like I’d be over-eating especially low intensity but for a 4-6 hour ride I kind of lose track - usually have maybe a gel, and energy bar, a banana, and a few nuts and sweets. After that I’ve sort of had enough of it all. Sometimes I take a sandwich but then don’t really feel like it while riding. Have definitely felt the onset of bonking but then u put it down to fatigue from the increase in duration.
I should try and be more scientific but I tried to work it out once based on 60-80g/h and it seemed like a huge amount of calories needed and figured this would be more for racing pace? That would be like 2-3 gels an hour of the high5 ones I have, or 10 total which just seems insane for a ride?
Plus I generally don’t have carbs after I finish- maybe a vegetarian protein powder with milk. I thought it was carbs during, protein after? Now you mention it I don’t drink extra fluid after either really other than that.
My diet is pretty good and healthy but I’m vegetarian so I don’t have huge amounts of bulk protein- it’s from eggs, chickpeas etc. I’m 78kg at the moment which is closer to my ideal weight when I’m fit, that has dropped down from nearer 83 a year ago when I cycled less the preceding year.
I generally have plenty of days off, just life, weather, etc. But now I’m looking at my weekly load I notice there’s rarely an obvious week that’s much lower relatively. Maybe I need more of those. I figured as I’m not going that hard it’s not too bad but maybe at my age I need more?
This is my 6m Garmin training status. Not sure how much Garmin data people use alongside intervals but it’s just what I’m more familiar with - I don’t remember having been in this position before, where I’m being told my load is low but also I’m strained. In fact I’ve never seen strained come up this much I don’t think.
So on the right hand side of the HRV graph you can see the 7d baseline has gone below the normalised band limits. I’m no expert but most probably sign of accumulated fatigue. I wouldn’t be inclined to do too much intense training with HRV like that. Keep training light until that stabilises.
About supplements, I think it a little bit too much to take 60-80g/h. It requires some training and adaptation to absorb so much. Try less first, such as 30g/h. Then gradually increase the amount intake. But no matter how much you ate, the absorption rate is limited and is usually much lower than the consumption rate, which means you can never able to make up for the consumed portion even when your ride in zone2. I usually will take solid food, like bars or bananas when doing low intensity rides and gels for moderated and high intensive (eat during long rest between sets) rides, also I will take some energy drink with sugar.
Another way to supply is to eat some carb two hours or more before ride.
I think it’s quite important to have carbs after riding, especially for long rides. You can take some protein, but carbs should be eat within two hours after riding, for the best. For more information about the diet of cycling, you may want to refer this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2InF6nuTXzk
Usually one should intake 1.2-1.8g/kg protein. Eggs and milk are both good source for protein. But considering the vegetarian, maybe there is some nutrition which is mainly from meat, like some trace elements. Maybe you should ask for some professional advice for the vegetarian diet. This maybe one little to concern but I don’t think this is the main problem.
Don’t pay to much attention to the Garmin training status. It’s something they developed to give the user what they want, not something that is actually giving you any meaningful advice. Garmin is still stuck in the Threshold training hype and pushes ‘high aerobic’ way too much.
There are more sources giving the same advice to disable Garmin’s Training Status.
Interestingly, I do feel a bit fatigued. But whether that was influenced by the watch, I can’t say of course - maybe it emphasised it!?
Presumably the RHR, HRV, drop in vo2 max (garmin) and flat ftp are still valid pointers to look at?
I know I could just scrap all of this data and ride, possibly that is the better way, but I’m also really interested in it all. But perhaps it’s just too much a leap for us mere mortals to attempt to understand it and react to it like the experts here.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t pay attention to all those things, I’m just saying that Garmin’s Training Advice is not the best guidance…
Subjective scores (these should always take priority because no algorithm can tell how you feel on a consistent basis) together with the Fitness chart (Form - Fatigue), RHR and morning HRV can tell you a lot better what is going on.
If you have regular measurements of RHR and HRV in the morning, there is an extension that gives you advice on how you should handle that day. It’s called I’mReady4 and runs on your phone as a Matlab script. It takes RHR and HRV metrics through the Intervals API and shows you one out of 4 advices: HIT, LIT, As Planned, Rest.
I also set up a chart for the Fitness page to show you the daily advice from within the Intervals app. You can find the chart in ‘Custom charts’
The I’mReady4 app with the Training advice chart are based on ‘ithlete HRV’. Together with the HRV and RHR charts which are based on HRV4Training, these should give you a better view of your actual state of readiness, but still prioritize subjective scores if in doubt.
You can read up on both sources here:
Thank you, lots to digest. I actually tried that graph (now I know where they all hide) but of course it didn’t do anything - I’ll take a look properly at the backend setup.
Well, not rarely, you’ve never had a week off in almost 6 months. And, you went from essentially zero to 45 fitness. I can’t see your average load over a shorter time period although you’ve dropped recently in line with your HR and HRv metrics you are watching. Add in persistent chronic feelings of stress, fatigue and this looks mightily like overtraining.
In addition to a week OFF every 4 weeks, many highly trained athletes will take a much longer break off, several weeks or even months, every so often. Off-season they call it.
A week off is just that. Some say do nothing, maybe some long easy walks. Some say do some cross training. Some say maybe two active recovery rides. Some say a recovery ride and a very short HIIT session. Whatever, the load is very low.
As much as all these metrics lead many of us to believe we are caring for an engine and engineering standards apply, we aren’t. No metric is ultimately going to surpass our own knowledge and understanding of how our body feels. That takes some history to evaluate and reference properly. I think you are now in the middle of your first lesson.
Appreciate the kind words @Jcmiii - I’m feeling a bit better about myself now always learning……
Here’s my graph for the past 12 months, the earlier period is more usual for me - very on off, sometimes the offs being much longer, maybe even a year off the bike depending on other life factors (working abroad or away from my bike or just different commitments). So i guess the rests took care of themselves.
I think what happened is, my understanding of the 4th week was that it should be a light ‘recovery’ week of roughly half intensity rather than an ‘off’ week. Since I’d planned (and sometimes failed) to increase the amount over three weeks, the fourth week just became similar. So I suppose relatively I didn’t get much rest. Perhaps I need to re-evaluate what the recovery week should be for me.
I did a light Z2 today just because it was sunny and was quite disciplined at low intensity but after an hour I felt ready to head home - didn’t feel bad but just didn’t feel strong. Next week’s half-term so I’ll probably get a forced week off the bike anyway although it won’t be rest rest.
You have a very nice writing style too @Jcmiii btw, am always jealous about how succinctly many people here can write.
Also I have to say as well as intervals itself, I really like this community.
Thanks again for all the input.