I want to share this because I think it's important and not talked about enough.
After a big block of training in January, I ignored the warning signs and kept pushing. Here's what happened:
Warning signs I ignored:
What I should have done: Take a recovery week when Paincave first suggested it.
What I actually did: "One more hard week, then I'll rest." × 3 weeks.
The result: Full-blown overtraining. Took 3 weeks completely off the bike. Lost about 15% of my fitness. Now slowly rebuilding.
Lessons:
If you're reading this and currently in a hole — take the rest day. Your future self will thank you.
Thank you for sharing this. I went through something similar last year and the recovery was brutal — took me about 6 weeks to feel normal again.
The elevated resting HR was my canary in the coal mine too. Now I check it every morning and if it's more than 5bpm above baseline for 3+ consecutive days, I swap the planned workout for easy Z1.
Paincave's training readiness score has been really helpful for this — it catches the trend before I "feel" it.
This is so important, especially for athletes who are new to structured training and don't have years of body-awareness built up.
I'd add one more sign: performance decline despite increased training load. If you're doing the same workouts and your power numbers are dropping, that's a massive red flag. More training is NOT the answer — rest is.
I've been there too. The hardest part is the mental side — the fear that you're "losing fitness" by resting.
A coach once told me: "You don't get fit from training. You get fit from recovering from training." That completely reframed how I think about rest days.
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