Why am I getting slower?

It’s probably over-training, but there are other potential reasons and we’ll come to those. Firstly we need to look at the symptoms, which could include nagging fatigue, lack of motivation, multiple upper respiratory infections, injuries that don’t heal, irritability, loss of appetite, dramatic weight loss or weight gain, personality changes and poor or interrupted sleep.

Usually over-training is more a case of ‘overliving’. So the issue, intensity is almost certainly the culprit – intensity has a far deeper fatigue effect than volume and most people ride too hard, too often. Ideally 90% of training should be easier than you think it should be and 10% should be harder than most people do in their hardest session.