I’ve spent years worshipping the numbers. Power, heart rate, TSS, watts, rankings, splits, and sleep scores—I’ve tracked them all, and I’ve often used that data to help my Team OWL teammates.
There are so many apps, platforms, and dashboards that tell us how we “should” feel, how hard we “should” go, and whether we’re “on track.”
In a future post, I’ll break down all the ways we can track our training—but in this one, I’m going to talk about what happens when the data becomes a blur, and the message of the numbers gets lost.
Because recently, the numbers hit me in the face—and they were the least important part of the story.
The Race That Left Me Empty
Thursday, I raced a WTRL TTT with Team OWL on Zwift. On paper, the race went great. We placed 6th out of 11th in our division – not bad for a team of riders age 65+ competing against women half our age!
But when I got off the bike, I felt wiped out—seriously, “I‑never‑want‑to‑race-again” kind of tired.
I hadn’t trained any better or worse than usual. What was different? Earlier in the week, I’d done a long outdoor ride in high heat—in temperatures that were just too hot for me. Sometimes I forget how fast “summer” arrives in the high desert. I pushed through it, and it paid its toll. By Thursday’s TTT, my body was already carrying that debt.
After the race, I did my usual thing: I synced my Zwift data with Garmin, then scrolled through my metrics on the home screen in Garmin Connect, stopping at my Training Status.
There it was.
In bright, uncompromising letters: “Unproductive.”
Ouch.
When is enough enough? I’m exhausted, I can’t train any harder, and Garmin says I’m unproductive?
I honestly felt like giving up on the whole tracking experiment.
Reading Between the Lines
But then I slowed down and read the details.
Garmin went on to say:
“It looks like your current training load is high. Try reducing your training load a bit and adding rest to make your efforts more productive.”
Other apps had echoed the same message in different ways. My sleep metrics from a few days before showed: “While you had a good night’s sleep, your recovery level is still not optimal.”
And after the race, one of the sleep‑and‑recovery apps chimed in:
“Your HRV was 24ms, 21% lower than usual. This points to your body being in a more alert state from yesterday’s workout. Try a calmer evening tonight to help reset your recovery.”
None of this was a surprise—once I actually looked at it. My body had been telling me for days that it was tired, but I’d been too busy chasing data to listen.
The Pretty Picture That Wasn’t the Whole Story
I scrolled back through Garmin Connect and opened my 12‑week Training Status graph. For the weeks leading up to Zwift Community Live, the colors looked perfect: green (productive), blue (recovery), and purple (peaking), all neatly arranged in a way that screamed “this rider is dialed in.”
During ZCL, every ride appeared as green: “productive.”
On the surface, it was the kind of training plan coaches love to show as a textbook example.
The numbers painted a pretty picture, but the rest of the story was yet to come.
How would this all change once I got home?
Spoiler: not in a way I was paying attention to.
How would the new graph show:
- That I’d just traveled across eight time zones to get to Mallorca.
- That I caught a cold after and never fully recovered afterward.
- That by the time I got back to training, my body was still running on fumes.
Yes… but I wasn’t listening.
The Point of No Return
Once I got over the cold, I slid right back into my ‘normal’ training routine—work, writing, commitments, and a steady schedule of rides filled my calendar. Life was back to ‘normal’.
Thats when the pretty picture started to fade, and the real story began to unfold: one of fatigue, under‑recovery, and a busy life that refused to slow down just because my training plan said it should.
Then the colors on Garmin Connect started to shift.
The greens and blues disappeared completely.
In their place came orange (unproductive) and red (overreaching).
And that’s when I finally asked myself: Why wasn’t I listening to my body?
Did I feel tired?
You bet.
Was the TTT much harder than it should have been?
Absolutely.
But instead of taking that as a clear signal, I’d treated it as a personal failing—like I just wasn’t working hard enough.
The truth, as the apps kept repeating, was exactly the opposite:
More is not always better.
In fact, often, less is better.
It’s Time for a Recovery Week
That’s when I finally took a step back and made a simple decision:
It’s time for me to take a recovery week.
No more “productive” intervals.
No more trying to prove I can still hit the numbers I used to.
No more carrying the weight of “should” because the graph looks imperfect.
Instead, I’m giving myself permission to:
- Dial the intensity way down.
- Lower the volume.
- Add extra rest, walks, yoga, and sleep.
- Treat recovery as the main workout, not an afterthought.
This isn’t a surrender.
It’s a recalibration—for me.
And it might possibly be for you as well. Because if you’re over 55 (OWLs!) and still committed to staying fit on the bike, the goal isn’t to squeeze every last drop out of your body.
It’s to ride sustainably, healthily, and with enough energy left over to enjoy life off the bike.
So here’s what I’m learning, and what I’m trying to model for myself and for you:
Your body is not a spreadsheet.
Your training load isn’t a race.
And sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is nothing at all—except listen.
This article is the first in a new series, Listen to Your Body: Beyond the Numbers.
In this series, I’ll explore the apps we track with, narrow them down to the ones that actually matter, and dig into why we’re so hooked on badges, rewards, and “levels” that keep pulling us back to the screen. Most importantly, I’ll guide women like you to be more intentional about tracking—recognizing that your body is wiser than any training app.
The numbers are just feedback; they can guide you, but they don’t define you. The real truth lives in how you feel, how deeply you’ve recovered, and whether you’re building sustainable strength or quietly burning yourself out.
It’s time to turn down the volume on the data and tune in to your own body’s voice instead.
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