Here are a few previous threads that have covered recovery, fatigue, overtraining/overreaching and related topics:
http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?6392-Sports-Recovery-for-geezers
http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?2690-tired-after-long-commute-yesterday
http://bikearlingtonforum.com/showthread.php?2514-Bike-and-Food-Nutrition/
I agree with everyone else that sometimes you just need a break. Or at least dial it back a lot and take it easy for a week or so.
Rapid weight loss might catch up to you too. It’s good to get to a healthy weight, but it can be stressful to lose a lot of weight very quickly. You can get to a decent point, then hold there for a while before working on your next goal.
That leads to a related point, that it’s not realistic to make continual progress forever. Stay active, eat healthy and make progress. But step back occasionally and consolidate your health and fitness gains. It’s OK to be in a holding pattern for a while, where you don’t make significant gains in fitness. As long as you’re still remaining active and healthy, it’s OK to go easy on the rides at certain times of the year. We actually improve our fitness during rest periods. Workouts and training create stress and microdamage, and the potential for fitness improvement. But to turn that potential into actual fitness gains, we have to take a rest. This can mean a good night’s sleep in most cases. But if you overcook yourself with weeks and months of hard training/riding, then a longer break may be in order. Nothing wrong with taking the occasional rest day.
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On a different note, I think there might be a trick you could try out with your commute, to improve your fitness. You can make the rides tougher or longer, or both. Include some detours once in a while to turn the commute into a longer ride. Maybe not everyday, but once a week or so, add some extra distance (assuming this fits into your overall life schedule). Or find a hill or two and add that in place of a flatter route. While we don’t have the Rocky Mountains here, there are some moderately challenging climbs in the area, such as downtown to Columbia Heights, or downtown to Tenleytown in DC, some of the routes in North Arlington or Walter Reed Drive near Shirlington (Arlington) and the many short climbs around Potomac, MD.
An interesting tactic is to use CaBi for some rides, if that’s convenient for you. (If you do this, beware that downtown stations fill up very quickly on weekday mornings, and empty out on weekday evenings.) CaBi bikes are very heavy so you’ll go slower than you would on a lighter bike. But fitness isn’t measured by how fast you are going. After all, you can get excellent workouts on a spin bike and you aren’t moving at all. With CaBi, you do have to watch out for the tendency to slip into a low cadence. I’ve noticed this myself. When I ride on CaBi too often, my pedaling cadence in all rides tends to drop. So this year, I’ve made more of an effort to pedal at a faster cadence while on CaBi, even if that makes me slower on that particular trip. It takes longer to make a trip on CaBi than on a light road bike. So that same distance gets turned into a harder workout if you ride it on a CaBi bike. It will take longer too, so take that into account when working out your overall schedule. This is easier to figure out than to add the detours I mentioned above. You ride the same route as usual, but it becomes a harder challenge, because of the much heavier CaBi bike.
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I also looked at your Strava profile. If you weren’t an experienced cyclist before this year, that progression from Jan. to June and July is quite steep. While volume doesn’t determine the total stress load completely, it plays a part. In other words, if you ramp up your total hours or miles that quickly, it’s likely that you are putting a lot of stress on your body. Stress is good, but only to a point. Stress is required to spur your body to make changes that improve your fitness, as long as you give your body a chance to recover and rebuild after the workouts. But excessive stress digs too deep a hole, and causes decreasing performance and increasing fatigue.
There are no magic rules that apply to everyone in every situation. But doing too much too soon is a frequent training mistake among many new endurance athletes. Seems like you have gotten into this hole, based on the Strava mileage numbers and your reported slower speeds and increasing fatigue. Those are all clear signs that you’ve started to overreach. Back off on the throttle a bit until you start to feel “normal” again. Be sure to eat a healthy diet with enough quality calories to support your riding (and any other workouts you might be adding). You can get your energy back, as long as you give your body a chance to recover.
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