Resting will help me recover? No way!

Dr. Gabe Mirkin gives us a tidy little list of common causes for drops in athletic performance. Although some, like low-salt syndrome and improper recovery eating might not be so obvious, I'm always flummoxed when highly athletic people fall victim to problem #1:

1) The most common cause of a drop in performance in cycling, or any other sport, is overtraining: going hard when you should go easy. Hard-and- easy refers to intensity (speed and pressure on the pedals), not to total mileage. On one day, you ride very fast with your group, feel sore on the next day and go slowly for as many days as it takes for the soreness to go away. When the soreness goes away, you ride fast again. If you take hard workouts while your muscles are still sore you can cause chronic muscle soreness.

What? You mean I actually need to rest in order to recover? How can that be? It's not like I sleep when I'm tired or I eat when I'm hungry. When I'm fatigued, I thought piling on more stress would be a good thing.

I swear. Either we'll sitting on our heinies, porking out on Bloomin' Onions at Outback Steakhouse or we're drilling ourselves into the ground by over-exercising. Where's the middle ground?