Fatigue and Detraining

We are at the time of year where generally racing is starting to come to an end and the offseason is starting. During this time, it’s interesting how athletes can sometimes confuse tiredness and fatigue with a state of detraining.

The typical athletes that fall into this are generally club racers for both cycling and running, regular short distance racing, lots of micro tapers throughout the season is perfect conditions to create this scenario. They might think they are tired from the season and rest but in fact they are just creating a cycle in which they are detraining from constant tapering, then detraining more through rest.

In contrast, ultra endurance athletes are more prone to being actually tired after a season or event, this is largely due to events being few and far between allowing less disruption to training block and also being tired from the overall event, which might be something so long that causes deep muscular fatigue, sleep patterns and the endocrine system.

There are various ways in which you can identify whether you are tired or detrained, some of these could be;

·       Simple RPE: Do you want to get out for that training session or is everything simply a chore.

·       Resting Heart Rate: This is the traditional approach, with the theory being that sustained increased resting heart rate is a sign of fatigue, however, one thing we need to consider is that decreased blood plasma volume through reduced training will also result in increased heart rate.

·       HRV (heart rate variability): This can be tracked now most Garmin’s and Whoop bands etc. and gives a decent insight into how your body is reacting to current stress.

However! As recreational athletes we do this for fun and sometimes total rest is a welcome change and reset, but if you are like me and don’t like resting, then it might not be the answer.

Ultimately, the end of season period is different for everyone, and should be treat as such, athletes and coaches should treat every case individually and factor athlete happiness (most important!) previous training/racing and future goals before deciding the best way forward.

A few pictures below from previous data;

Picture 1 – 2016 CTL chart, with CTL slowly declining due to a packed season of local events, from a performance point of view, I began to decline around the end of June, at the time I thought the decline was due to fatigue, but in hindsight it was likely more down to reduced training load and continually disrupted training.

Picture 2 – HRV chart post UTMB Wildstrubel, a 19 hour event resulting in an impact to sleep, and an expected knock to endocrine (hormonal) system, HRV from this effort took 3 weeks to recover to normal levels. Which, in this instance, correlated well with RPE.