YOU KEEP KNOCKING OFF THOSE TRAINING SESSIONS … UNTIL YOU DON’T
It takes consistent training to avoid slogging through your next cycling tour. Your basic training plan should be a routine of steady riding. Adding some interval sessions once or twice a week will boost your power too.
Riding easy and long is, well, easy. When intervals ask more from your legs and they don’t respond something has gone wrong. Or your legs respond a little bit, but it “feels” so much harder.
What’s the culprit cutting you off at the hips?
There are four theories you can consider. Unfortunately, none of these are definitive. Much of the research has been done on muscle samples from rats. We all know our legs aren’t filled with rat fibres - though when we’re truly exhausted it can sure feel that way!
Theory 1 - Glycogen Depletion
First blame falls to low muscle glycogen levels.
Glycogen is the high-octane fuel for muscle performance. When your perceived exertion spikes higher than expected for a hard workout consider what you’ve eaten in the past 24 hours.
Glycogen comes from the carbohydrates you eat. If you continually skimp on carbs, almost every workout will feel much harder than normal. This isn’t true overtraining, but it will feel like it. Emotionally, you’ll beat yourself up too.
One training solution is to begin adding more quality carbohydrates to your diet. Every meal should have complex carbs or a variety of beans, lentils and chickpeas. Complex carbs mean whole grains - truly whole, nothing processed into “white.”
Theory 2 - Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness
I’m sure you’ve felt this after your first weight session or the first hard interval workout of the season. Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) emerges from the small microtears in muscles.
Take a good rest day and the damage gets repaired. It usually doesn’t turn into a chronic condition, unless you never take a rest day or two.
Your easiest way to adapt is putting at least 48 hours between each muscle micro-tearing session. If not, you’ll keep feeling sore and compromise every workout session.
Theory 3 - Cytokines and Inflammation
Training breaks you down, releasing proteins in your muscles called cytokines. These trigger localized muscle inflammation. Your immune system oversees healing this inflammation.
Too much training can lead to chronically high cytokine levels, putting your immune system on red alert. This can weaken your muscles so that your next ride releases still more cytokines. This dials your immune response even higher. Avoid this in normal times, and especially now during COVID times.
This is the pathway to true overtraining syndrome. The number of cytokines you release is likely programmed in your genes. Some athletes are more susceptible than others.
Minimizing this response is yet another reason to build plenty of easy riding into your training schedule. 80% of your workouts should be easy and no more than 20% muscle-burning hard.
Theory 4 - Oxidative Stress
You’ve probably heard about eating a diet high in “antioxidants.”
Many studies show overtrained athletes have elevated levels of oxidative stress. Yet paradoxically, we need oxidative stress to trigger our body’s adaptive processes to get stronger from hard workouts. Daily supplementation with antioxidants, like vitamins C and E, would blunt these adaptations. You won’t reap the full benefits from your workouts.
You want the oxidative stress from working out. You need rest and a diet of whole foods to adapt and get stronger muscles from your workouts. Whole food sources that naturally contain antioxidants are often best. Think about bright coloured foods, like peppers, fruits and berries.
But maybe you have pushed too hard, too many times, tilting yourself towards overtraining? Then a shortcourse of antioxidant supplements could bring you back on track.
That’s the conclusion in a 2020 study published in Redox Biology, “Intramuscular mechanisms of overtraining.” [REF: https://www. sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S2213231720300835].
The paper makes no short-course antioxidant supplementation recommendations. But it’s worthwhile experimenting. Next time you have a big week of training, like 20+ hours experienced in a typical training camp, take vitamin C and E supplements during the following recovery week. Not during the camp, but after camp. If you’re one of those riders that never seems to get stronger from a training camp experience this might be just what you need.
You could also consider recovery supplementation during the week after your big cycle tours. You might bounce back feeling great faster.
Limit this supplementation to one week. From then on, rely on a quality balanced diet to give you all your nutrients.
Ride Lots … Rest Lots … Eat Well … Repeat
Whichever of these four theories might be finding their way into your cycling, commit to rest and nutrition. Both will be insurance for enjoyment during training and touring.