gattm99

The last few years I've been riding less, especially less longer road bike rides, instead opting for shorter 1 hour rides with hill repeats and mountain bike adventures. I could tell that my fitness levels are going down, I'm not really that much slower, but all my PRs on STRAVA are from 2013. I can really tell that the rides are affecting me more which I believe is because I've lost that big aerobic base that I used to have.

This winter I decided to try and really get on the trainer more. I'm using Zwift and putting in about 8 hours a week.

So I've been told that a higher then normal heart rate with a high PE suggests that you may be over training, but sometimes I experience the opposite. Low HR with high PE. Take last night for instance. I was doing a one hour training race. Right from the beginning I just felt very week. I could barely hold 200 watts, even though I usually hold more. I was breathing hard and actually feeling a weakness in my arms, especially the left. All through this my heart rate was hanging around 150, which isn't all that high for me, my max is about 180. I had ate a large supper about 3 hours before training so maybe that was a problem.

It seems like every time I get on the trainer I'm either Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. Either I'm barely hanging on or crushing it.

A knowledgeable guy told me that he thought what I was experiencing was a result of lacking an aerobic fitness base.

I wonder when I get on the trainer and I feel like this if I should just shut it down, spin it out, or push on like I did last night? I was really suffering last night but after about 30 minutes began to recover a bit, I was still slow but I wasn't feeling like I could pass out.

I also wonder if I'm not suffering from overheating on the trainer? Or something similar, as the feeling I was getting last night reminded me a bit of heat exhaustion.

I also wonder if I should cut out the racing for awhile until I've got more base?

Thanks for any thoughts, advice or whatever you've got.

https://www.strava.com/athletes/186427

Carbonfiberboy 

High PE combined with low HR = overreaching which can turn into overtraining if you keep it up. High HR during high PE is what's normal.

Yes, if your HR won't go up, the thing to do is back it way off and just toddle along. And yes, if you don't have one or two 24" box fans blowing on you, you're doing it wrong. They should be strong enough that you need cycling glasses. Since I'm indoors, I'll frequently ride shirtless if it's over 60° - I ride my rollers out in my shop with the winter temperature usually around 50-55.

You might try doing most of your training rides steadily at VT1 (first ventilation threshold). This is the point at which your deep steady breathing would rather suddenly become faster if you increased your effort and heart rate. You should be able to recite the alphabet, maybe twice in one breath at or below VT1. My VT1 is at about 75% MHR. Yours may be different. A steady 1-1.5 hours at that threshold is very good training. Try only two Zwift races/week.

The weakness in the left arm is a bit worrying. If you feel pain there, quit and maybe call 911, eh?

Drew Eckhardt 

Overreaching / overtraining can manifest in both sympathetic (higher HR at a given exertion level) and parasympathetic (lower than expected HR) forms.

It's relative to your current fitness level - depending your history, you could be fine at 16 hours a week or over-trained at 6.

I always get the parasympathetic form.

While imperfect (repeated hard efforts seem to have more real-life impact than the numbers suggest) Coggan (Training Stress Score, Accute Training Load, Chronic Training Load, and Training Stress Balance as CTL - ATL) and Skiba's (BikeScore, Short Term Stress, Long Term Stress) metrics are reasonable approximations with ATL/STS and CTL/LTS decaying exponentially over short (7 day default) and long (42 day default) periods respectively.

You have some CTL/LTS ramp rate (its weekly first derivative; like 5 TSS / week) which you can sustain for some period (3 or 4 weeks before you need one off for adaptation, and some longer period of months where you need an extended break). You can also approximate that with some negative limit on stress balance - I'm ready for a rest when I hit -20 TSS. Going beyond gets you over-reaching then over-training.

Easy base miles are the traditional way to obtain reasonable CTL/LTS so you can survive hard efforts, although it's actually about intensity weighted average daily riding time.

Give up when you can't hit your power targets because then you're hurting yourself.

You should have a better balance between harder and easier efforts. The Polarized prescription is for 80% of sessions below your aerobic threshold, and 20% above your anaerobic threshold. The time balance could be just 5% at high intensity riding 4x8 or 3x10 minutes once a week out of 10-15 hours total.

Use streaming media so the easy hours are tolerable on a trainer. The better Roku unit remotes are WiFi and have a headphone jack so you can hear over the fan noise without disturbing the rest of your family. They do Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Google Play, and most other services apart from Apple iTunes

You need to do that to be fresh enough for your hard efforts, and there's also a maximum beyond which more increases fatigue without faster gains in lactate threshold and VO2max.

Billat, et. al showed no improvement going from one to three HIT sessions per week in Interval training in VO2max : effects on aerobic performance and overtraining markers.

https://r2ph.com/attachments/025_19.1...O2max-MSSE.pdf

My FTP didn't increase any quicker with two interval days and a pair of tempo rides than when I tried a more polarized approach with 3x10 or 4x10 minute intervals as hard as possible once a week, a 1:15 ride aiming for 95% of FTP, and staying below my aerobic threshold the other 4 riding days.

With more easy rides I did get a lot faster over longer distances, and 90-95% of FTP felt a lot better.

Don't skip your rest weeks - they're when super-compensation occurs.

While 1 in 4 is traditional, you may need 1 in 3. Supposedly that goes with getting older.

I couldn't handle 1 in 4 after losing a month from crashing last summer, and 1 in 3 ceased being enough presumably due to losing my base after which I decided to forget about being faster until 2016.

gattm99

Wow, thanks both of you, Eckhardt there is much there I need to study. Tonight I wasn't feeling too hot and just set it at 120HR or about 66% for an hour of light spinning.

The term overreaching is a new one to me and I definitely need a rest week of just base mile spinning I think.

Carbonfiberboy 

My post 40 in Machka's thread, one thread up from yours, has some links about these issues.

rumrunn6

you might try
B6
B12
caffeine tab
box o raisins