OVER with Over-Training (and Better HRV Numbers)

I first mentioned in a post exactly a month ago that I was feeling sluggish and my Garmin was telling me I was "strained." And then I followed it up with this post noting that my HRV status started to drop hard after the Fall Classic Duathlon, and maybe I didn't give myself enough rest and recovery after that race. But then after skipping 2 bike workouts and turning a hard run into an easy run while we spent 3 days in Chicago in late October, I thought I'd be good to go! My training status actually said "recovery" for a few hours until I went for a walk later that weekend and it changed to "maintaining" for that day. I thought I was over it!

But then I had a rough long run the next morning that put my HRV status back to "low" and my training status back to "strained." Damn it.

Then an odd thing happened: I raced the USATF MN 8K CC Championship 11 days ago, and then my training status and HRV status started normalizing! A 100% all-out effort started putting me back in the clear! It was like it was a reset! Here's the last 4 weeks, and the day of the race was the last "low" reading before coming up:

... and here were the 4 weeks before, showing
it in the green and then dropping down in mid-October.


My "training status" that showed me OK for 1 day before dropping
back to strained, and then it's been good for the last 10 days!

So how did that all-out effort help get me out of "strained" training? I think it has to do with the length of my runs. That one "good" day in the chart above before it dropped back down to "strained" again was the day before a long run. And then the long run crashed me. And when I did the CC race, it was in place of my long run for the week. So sure, it was a harder effort, but it was 30 mins of running instead of 70-80. Apparently it was those long runs that were keeping me over-trained.

And when I look at my "overnight averages" over the last 7 days, my biggest dip is the night after my weekly long run:

The dotted line dipping on the 14th was the night after a 12 mile run.

And I was OK last week with lots of "intensity minutes" because I didn't have a long run! So here's to hoping I'm back on the right track!