I'm still fairly new to cycling (a little under a year), so I'm doing my best not to overtrain. I notice if I do more than a couple consectutive days of riding, I start to feel pain after my rides (not the good lactic acid type). I would like to increase my workouts to 5-6 days a week, but for now my body just isn't allowing it. Is a faster recovery an ability that also builds with time?

Faster recovery does build with time. You also learn to pay more attention to it.

You may only feeling fatigue. You'd need to dig pretty deep to clinically overtrain.

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your body's pretty smart, it will do everything in its power to prevent you from overtraining. IME, overtraining requires an enormous amount of mental strength in order to grind yourself into the ground and is usually precluded by (or assisted by) some other external, non-training stresses (work, lack of sleep, poor diet, illness, etc).

In my layman's view there a different kinds of overtraining.

There's the overstrained musculoskeletal system you seem to be experiencing, and then there's the "real" overtraining, which might not give you any pain, but just have your shape stall and drop because of going too hard too much (especially when not having the aerobic base).

After running into overtraining a few years ago, using a HR monitor has been helping me a lot not to go too hard on the "easy" days. Getting a lactate test to determine your zones and give you are ballpark where your HR ought to be is very affordable, and goes a long way for a hobbyist and occasional sportive/club racer like me.

Edit: everything I said above only applies after you made sure your fit on the bike is good, and you don't have any pre-existing skeletal/muscular problems that should be addressed.

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I have more than a passing interest in this subject as I think I suffered from it a few years back and my wife (a phd in sport and exercise science) is involved in a study to test for a marker to identify overtraining before it becomes too late.
It's real term is "unexplained under performance syndrome" and as mentok suggests is more often than not related to other external factors.
it is a very hard problem to diagnose but I would say that just feeling pain in your muscles for a few days after workouts is not really a symptom. More likely that you just have an over use injury (very different to uups). Get your bike setup checked out and go see a sports therapist for massage and diagnosis on the painful areas.
There is also the theory of over reaching in training that suggests you must push hard to recover stronger - boonen doesn't train all year on level 2 rides and cafe stops! An old coach of mine once told me " being and athlete isn't healthy " and if you are pushing your body to its physical limits whilst trying to keep your weight low and holding a full time job then be prepared for a little discomfort!

I think I have hit the overtraining wall.


The month of December was absolutely amazing for me. Without really trying I was hitting power numbers at what felt like a relatively moderate intensity - and setting new PBs. I wasn't really trying to set new PBs, it just sort of happened through riding. I never really went beyond what felt like 90% of my max on any of these efforts. I dont think I ever went beyond 10hrs a week, during the summer I usually do 13-15 regularly with much harder intensity.


I decided to take a rest week in the last week of December. That is where everything seemed to fall off. When I came back everything seemed to be alright, but my legs just felt completely flat. There was no snap. It felt like I had just rode a very long steady ride the day before. My power and heart rate seemed to match up pretty similar to before, but the RPE was WAY up. I just tried to do some lower end L4 intervals and it felt like torture. My heart rate never went above LT, but it felt like I was pedaling through sand. I stopped the intervals halfway - something I almost never do.


So for those that have gone through overtraining - how long did it take you to recover from it? Did you find anything in particular helped you?

They say there is no such thing as over training, simply under recovering.


Take another week or two just enjoying the scenery and/or spinning around like you're a tour guide for grandmothers.

I've managed to achieve it a few times in my life, most recently in the fall trying to "balance" (yeah right) my training schedule during a concerted weight cutting diet while also working full time and going to school full time. Basically a recipe for disaster, so no surprise there, but it takes a LOT of work to force yourself into this kind of predicament.

From my experience, I've never realized I was overtraining/under-recovering until everything falls flat... numbers drop, crazy food cravings wreck the diet, grades plummet, etc. But when I think I'm overtraining, it turns out it's because there was a headwind or my seatpost slipped.

Hey I had exactly the same situation at the end of the summer, went to the alps for 2 weeks come back was riding really strong and had a rest week and after that I just felt dead as you described. Luckily it was just the end of the season so I just went out and rode how ever I felt so mainly just steady z2 rides and after maybe a month I felt good again.

I went through something I always thought was over trained years ago. Feeling great on the bike in mid summer, doing my 15-20 hrs a week then it was all of a sudden...nothing. No power, no motivation nothing. I took a wk off still nothing, 2 wks started riding again but it was probably 6 months until I felt like I was getting back to normal.

I think when you cross the line, it takes a long time to recover. It's not something a week of rest fixes.
I learned to listen to my body more closely. It will tell you when you need to rest.

Edit.
I am not an expert or anything at this. Just my own experience and from reading about the topic

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