The Dreaded Dead Legs Experience

Well, it's happened. I've hit a wall that I've never hit before. The dreaded feeling of dead legs as result of over training. As blogged about on March 26, I had a hard week of training and positive results. I want into the beginning of the second week of the training block with high hopes of having another great week. Monday's VO2 max went well. I took it easy on Tuesday for my recovery ride by hitting the dirt jumps at the local Golden Bike Park... maybe should have took a few more breaks between hitting the jumps since my legs aren't used to jumping. Wednesday I should have took the hint that over training was occurring and backed off. I had three Maximum Steady State intervals with efforts uphill. The first interval I felt a little weak, but decided to do the second interval anyway since sometimes the first interval your still not quite warmed up. The second interval I was able to do, but it was a lot more of an effort then what it should have been. Stubbornly I did the third interval anyway. I should have did the first interval and known that a recovery was needed, but I guess I figured a day off on Thursday was going to be enough... that was a mistake. Friday was a 3.5 hour ride with a 2 hour tempo effort. I had to cut the tempo effort short by 20 minutes because I could feel the effects of over training worse then ever. I was really hoping by cutting the Friday training short I'd somehow miraculously recovery enough for Saturdays 5 hour hard endurance training. Instead Saturday was a disaster. I couldn't even hit the low HR zones to warm up. I ended up doing a 3.5 hour death march ride before calling it quits. My diet also played a key role in my over training. On Thursday I broke 150 was done to 149. I was so caught up on trying to hit my max power to weight ratio that I continued to cut calories during two critical weeks that I needed the extra calories. Fail.