Week 8 of the 12 week general fitness plan: After a super stressful day at work, with poor sleep, in the middle of a high volume training week, I got absolutely buried by the Bat workout on Wednesday, like 2 min into the first interval, no legs, energy or desire, so for the first time I bailed on a workout.
I finished Thursday’s lower intensity workout but it felt harder than I was expecting and my HR was always above the target range. Then I made the mistake of reading all the forum comments about how easy the Bat workout is and spent the rest of the day thinking maybe I should just give up on the training plan altogether because it’s obviously more than my body can handle.
Today, after resolving the stress issue at work and getting a decent sleep, I loaded up the Bat workout, and guess what? It was a comfortable 6/10 effort. So I’m really proud of myself for not quitting and giving it another go. But the bigger takeaway is how much mental/emotional stress can derail my physical performance. I now know that I can do all the training in the world but if I don’t take care of the outside stuff, I’m not going to get where I want to be on the bike. A great lesson.
Yes stress is real and sleep is key. The other thing to realize is that workouts done a few days ago will affect how you perform today. The important thing is to do the best you can do under the circumstances and be flexible enough to change the workout if you need to.
Funny you mention this, as the Bat also destroyed me last week after a stressful couple weeks. Could barely make it into the third interval, and had to bail after failing both the third and fourth.
This was despite sticking to zone 2 rides during the two weeks prior, because I was concerned about tipping over into non-functional overreaching after some max heart rate decreases during some hard workouts in October (about 10bpm lower than I would typically expect for the workout intensity).
Good encouragement to try again once I’m back into a better-rested and less-stressed state!
@adiallo Correct - the body makes no distinction between different stresses so if you feel like that is the case in the future think about dialing down the workout. Pick something like Recharger, one of the shorter Inspiration videos or just ride around in Zwift in an easy Z1/Z2.
Yep. Not unusual at all to hit the wall on a workout. It’s often a combination of physical and mental factors. Things I’ve done is just dial back the intensity enough to get through that workout and continue with the plan, or take a break for a couple of days, push the workout and the rest of the plan out those two days, then continue the plan starting with that workout.
It’s easy to push the plan out. Delete the existing plan from your calendar. All the completed workouts will remain. Add it back it starting (or ending) x days later than the original plan started (or ended). Only the future workouts in the plan will be added to your calendar.
Good info on restarting the plan. Fortunately the day I madeup the workout had a 30 min recovery spin on the calendar so that’s the only volume I’ll miss for the week. Can live with that
