Hey everyone,
I think it’s safe to say that I’m a little burned out – both physically and mentally. I had a really good ride two weekends ago back in Clear Lake, and that’s the last time I managed to put in some sustained efforts at 170 bpm. However, ever since Lago Vista, I’ve been waking up sore almost every single day but I managed to keep putting in 10% increases in wattage each week, but the fatigue has finally caught up with me and I just couldn’t put in any power during any of my training rides last week. I don’t have any races planned until the summer, so I’ve decided to lower the intensity over the next two week while maintaining the same number of hours so I don’t lose too much fitness.
I think that’s one of the really hard parts about training – you can’t monotonically increase resistance day after day and expect yourself to improve without interruption, so you have to know when to reduce your efforts and let your body heal. The drawback to doing that though, is that when you start increasing your efforts again you’ll have lost a little bit of fitness. That’s why I’m scared of falling back – I keep thinking to myself, “I’ve gotten this far, but if I take a break I’ll lose fitness and I would have lost all the gains I’ve made, and all this work would have been for nothing.” I learned the lessons from that kind of thinking the hard way when I tore three of my tendons three years ago. That injury set me back for half a year, which was one of the most frustrating moments I’ve ever had as I was also dealing with hand problems at that time. Since then, I’ve learned to take it easy when I get fatigued, and I’ve been injury free for the last two and a half years.
From experience, I’ve noticed that it takes me about 4-6 weeks after a 2 week break (from doing absolutely nothing) to be back to where I was before, and over the next 4 weeks I’ll be doing things that I wasn’t able to do previously. That takes a lot of patience, but sometimes when I see my friends getting great results, it’s really tempting to increase my workouts beyond what my body can handle. So, sometimes it’s hard to convince myself to take a break, even when I’m fatigued.
With respect to my studies, I’ve been burned out since the first semester of my junior year of college, though there have been some periods, maybe 1-2 months at a time where I’d really be able to focus on learning. I feel like I’ve been close several times, but I still haven’t put in a sustained effort for 6 months or more since then. One of the things that’s different about adulthood is that you don’t have 4-5 months off like you do in college to rest and take your mind off things. On the other hand, in college, there are a lot more instances where the stress is really intense, whereas with work it’s spread out more evenly throughout the year, except you don’t get as much time off to relax. In my opinion, this is why it’s more important in your adult years to manage your time wisely – it’s really easy to get burned out if you don’t regulate your efforts carefully. In college, there are times when you can really push yourself, sleeping only 4 hours a night the month before finals because you know you’ll have a long time to rest afterwards once you’re done. It’s a lot trickier to effectively time your efforts as an adult, as once you’re done with a big project, you’ll have to go back to work the next day. I haven’t taken more than 4 consecutive days off work since November 2010…which seems like a big difference compared to the 100-day break I had in between semesters. It was especially though during my internship, but by now I’ve gotten used to it. I think if I took more than 2 weeks off, I’d start getting bored.
Anyway, I don’t really have anything new planned besides studying like crazy until the end of next month. I’ll try to keep the physical activity up, but last fall, I had to take 2-3 weeks off training before my exam to prepare. After that, I plan on starting up my Algebra studies again and hopefully sticking with it until I finish the course. Sometimes, I wonder if I’m wasting my time with basic material, but I don’t feel secure without a firm grasp of the fundamentals. I suppose that’s what my actuarial exams are for…as they cover concepts based on material from branches of mathematics that I haven’t seen before. In that way, I’ll at least have something new to learn while reviewing things from the past.