We’ve looked at muscle fibre typology of world-class cyclists in different disciplines, and also how typology may affect recovery from high-intensity workouts. Now let’s explore how typology may affect the risk for overreaching after a high increase in training volume.

We have said it before but it bears repeating – to improve our fitness, we need to recover as hard, or even harder, than we train. The challenge is in knowing when we have reached that optimal level of training stimulus and when to back off from hard training.

Le Tour: Twenty one days and two thousand miles, by any measure it is a massive amount of work. While you may not undertake anything approaching Tour de France proportions, you may well face the risk of overtraining. How can you identify, and more importantly prevent this season derailing occurrence?