Old 01-06-22, 11:38 AM
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Carbonfiberboy 
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Originally Posted by jlippinbike
Thank you to all of you who commented and shared your thoughts on this topic. After reading your comments I did a little more research online and came to the conclusion that it is not ultra-endurance sporting activities that cause excessive oxidative stress. Instead, it is overtraining for such activities and events that is the true culprit. I think ultra-endurance athletes have a reputation for overtraining. But as long as one doesn't overtrain, then the unhealthiness of oxidative stress can be avoided while being a randonneur it seems. Without proper recovery periods following workouts something unhealthy is bound to occur.
Overtraining is medically known as Overtraining Syndrome (OTS)(google). It's rare and more common among younger racers. I'm a member of a rando club and am not aware of any member who has had OTS.

There are two separate "conditions" which an athlete may encounter, overreaching and overtraining. These are two completely different animals which are frequently confused. If you google overtraining, you'll run into this confusion here and there.

Overreaching: You want to do this occasionally. If you don't, you could and probably should be training harder. When you overreach, you'll find yourself grabbing a smaller cog than normal on a familiar hill when you aren't even tired. Your HR won't come up on that hill like it normally does. You seem to have gotten weaker. You won't be able to successfully complete an interval set which you did just fine last week. When this happens, you do a few days of half hour zone 1 trainer rides and find that you come back stronger than you were. This is called supercompensation. That's a good reason for always using a HRM. You try that hill, don't get a HR response and you turn around and ride home easy. Try it again the next day, it'll probably be fine or if not, ride home easy again. Etc.

Overtraining: This happens when you overreach and think that your problem is not too much work, but rather too little and you increase your training volume and/or intensity. That doesn't work, so you increase it some more. A few weeks of that, and you get OTS and will need months of rest to recover. Your whole season is shot and sometimes a chunk of the next season. Overtraining is at least partly glandular. You've worn out your ductless glands and they don't work anymore. A lion could charge you and your HR wouldn't increase.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics...ining-syndrome
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