.....since these signs can occur even when not overtrained or is it overeaching???Now to be mentally tough and look for the signs.
Mileage and Intensity
90 days
I trust the above image works: I'll post this and check afterwards, and if it does here what it shows. what you are looking at it the last 90 days of running, intensity factor, miles, training stress.
28 days
this image is TSB, ATL, CTL
TSB = Training Stress Balance. This is often referred to as 'form.' It has to do with the athlete being rested before a race (or not). It may also help us to understand when the athlete is moving toward overtraining as a result of overreaching, which is necessary to achieve high goals. When well rested TSB is positive or at least trending strongly positive. When not 'on form' TSB is very negative and/or trending strongly negative.
CTL = Chronic Training Load. Referred to as 'fitness,' this is a marker of one's training stress over a long period of time, such as 6 weeks. The higher the CTL the higher the athlete's fitness. It indicates that the athlete can handle higher stress levels. Stress (workouts) are the reason we train as it produces adaptation which we call 'fitness.'
TSS = Training Stress Score. This is the heart of the system. The athlete's TSS is calculated for every workout by measuring intensity and duration. Intensity is measured relative to the athlete's Functional Threshold Power (FTP) which is the highest average power the athlete can maintain for 1 hour.
ATL = Acute Training Load. Called 'fatigue.' It is the athlete's short term, rolling-average TSS. It is generally averaged over a 7-day period.
How much negative TSB I can take without overtraining risk?? This is pretty relevant now as I have a pretty clear calendar for the next couple of months. But today; Man I am flat....just ready to put the feet up and watch the Olympics. You'll see that I have been at negative 48 (3 1/2hr trial run) and 12 (13.1mile race) in the past few weeks and am now positive territory.
It isn’t so much the depth of negative TSB that is the cause of overtraining as it is the breadth of negative TSB. And mine is not very wide I think. The key to avoiding overtraining is to have frequent rest to shed fatigue. I've been doing this about every 3rd week at most for about 3-5 days depending on what I’m seeing and hearing from my body. This is very individualized of course, and at the moment I have just had 2 days/week doing hard workouts and then one day on the weekend where it has been racing for the past 4 weeks. This may be the sign that those races have caught up with me. The prior 4 weekends starting with last w/end: 15K, Duathlon 6k/20k/3k, 13.1, 10K, 3.5hr trial run. Perhaps it due to also the fact this past 24 was a break through workout too requiring more than the norm of 24hrs recovery. It was my hardest workout at Vo2 for 1.5 miles following a 1 mile TT. Another observation I have is the past weekend was perhaps also considered a break through workout...an hour at CV. But despite a quick recovery after the w/end ( no workout was scheduled the next day), another break through workout yesterday may have been the tipping point in me reaching my peak fitness. "the more fit you are the faster you race and the need to quick recoveries"....maybe I am there?
With this long block of uninterrupted training it has been very important I honored the easy days and days off, which i have. If you see the running days there are days where no running is done . Specifically Mondays are only weight training. It is not uncommon for me to competley do nothing on Sunday after a Saturday race when travelling back from the interstate racing. Not only does this help me to shed the fatigue and thus avoid overtraining it also makes the quality workouts higher quality (meaning higher absolute intensities and greater duration at moderately high intensities). This is evident from each w/ends racing where I have been hitting some very good times.
Last week you can see a lot of negative TSB, different durations that have definitely overloaded me and created a lot of TSS to rise. When compared to the previous 2 months TSS range on average is it's lowest since May leading into a Ironman 70.3 race.
With this “science” of training right now is very much a trial and error: an art in trying things, (like for the next 30 days racing duathlons is 3 out of 4 week ends) and see how the body responds. It is possible the long term ATL last month is catching up with my CTL high intensity racing of late. The coming 4-6 weeks Tom and I will get a sense of the training load I'll be able to manage and make adjustments going forward based on my responses. I would expect within 2 mths we will be able to 'prescribe' workouts looking back and know that the past 3-4week was either overtraining or not. At that point we will know more about how to use this data.
Your thoughts and observations are welcomed....now I just regret having that Snickers bar and Tim Tam with for lunch.
back to training very easily for a few days and see how this w/ends race turns out. I'll let you know. Perhaps it is just a case of 48hrs over training blues. So which is it? Over trained or just over-reaching where I am going through an adaption phase increasing fitness.