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r/triathlon • … • u/thoughtihadanacct

Do I need to recalibrate/restart my intervals.icu account?

I competed my first IM in the first week of Oct. After that I took two weeks completely off before slowly restarting training in the last week of Oct/first week of Nov. I use intervals.icu mostly just to track my training load (to see that I'm in the "green zone" not over/under training. I suppose it should be similar with training peaks or any other similar software.

The problem I'm facing is that since my restart, I've been feeling more fatigued than during some of the heavier weeks of my IM training even though my current training is at barely 1/3 the training load (according to intervals) of said heavy weeks. I'm currently fluctuating between the grey (transition) and blue (performance) zones, and I can't get into the green (improving) zone without what feels like a ridiculous amount to training. It's as if the software expects me to pick up from where I left off at the end of my IM program and keep increasing the volume from that last peak week.

I feel like maybe I lost more fitness during the two weeks off than the software predicts, or said another way the base fitness that it thinks I have is too high compared to my reality.

Has anyone faced this similar situation? Should I abandon my account and create a new one? Is there a way to change some setting to reflect reality? Or will I eventually regain enough fitness and "catch up" with the software prediction?

(One thing I'll add is that during the IM training I was very happy with the way it predicted my training volume. I was consistently in the green zone and felt great. The few times I went into the red zone I did in fact feel more tired than usual. So it's not like the software doesn't work for me. Something just went wrong after the IM. Something about doing a huge "training day" followed by two weeks completely off screwed up the algorithm I feel)

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