The Not-So-Obvious Data
As athletes, it's easy for us to look at the obvious data from our training sessions and nothing else. What was the pace, elevation, watts, total yards? But what if we looked at the not-so-obvious data: signals, that by themselves seem innocuous, but when view holistically with others can warn us that something may not be right, and help us prevent a catastrophic "perfect storm".
Here are a few signals that when viewed over time, allow us some insight into trends and patterns our bodies and minds might be going through.
Resting Heart Rate and HRV Drift
A single bad morning number may mean nothing. Three or four days of resting heart rate trending up, or HRV trending down, while training load stays flat or increases - that may be a sign that's something's wrong. It could be the body telling us recovery isn't keeping pace with stress. Instead of waiting for a workout to confirm it, why not make adjustments before that workout happens?
The Pace to Rate of Perceived Effort (RPE) Gap
This is the one we can miss quite often. Let's say we hit the same pace we always hit, but RPE creeps from a 6 to a 7 to an 8 over two weeks. While the output looks identical on paper, the cost of producing it isn't. When effort rises faster than fitness should explain, something underneath is degrading - fatigue, sleep debt, or early-stage overreach.
Sleep Quality Before Sleep Quantity
Total sleep hours tells us less about quality of sleep than how we may describe the sleep. "Slept 8 hours but woke up tired" three days running is a louder signal than one short night. Fragmented or non-restorative sleep alongside hard training blocks is one of the most reliable precursors to both injury and burnout we have, and it's usually sitting right there in our notes and sleep data.
Skipping Easy Days, Not Hard Days
When we start missing recovery runs or easy spins - not because of schedule, but because "I just didn't feel like it" - it's wise to pay attention. Motivation failing on low-stakes days, while hard sessions still get done out of obligation or identity, is a classic burnout pattern. The hard work is the last thing to go. The willingness to rest is often the first.
Localized, Recurring Discomfort Notes
One feeling of a tight calf may not be anything. The same body part showing up three separate times across two weeks, even at low severity, is a pattern and probably not a coincidence. Many of us tend to under-report pain because we don't want to seem fragile, or we have a harder time discerning workout pain from injury pain. We have to actively look for repetition, not wait for a problem to finally occur.
Compliance Without Enthusiasm
This one doesn't show up in data at all - it shows up in "tone". When our feedback to our coach goes from detailed and engaged to clipped, minimal, "did the workout" entries, that's a signal that often precedes a larger drop-off. The data is still there. The relationship with the process is what could be eroding.
A quick aside: I flew in the Navy for 18 years, and every year we'd have a "Safety Stand Down" to review mishaps (aviation accidents) that occurred so that we could learn from them. And 99 of 100 accidents were always caused by human error. It was never one thing, but rather many things occurring over time that seemingly created the optimal conditions for the mishap to occur. We called it the "Swiss Cheese" effect.
It would look something like this below:
With this image in mind...
None of these signals we've been identifying are dramatic on their own. That's exactly why they get missed - each one is small enough to explain away individually. Injury and burnout rarely arrive as a single red flag. They arrive as four or five quiet ones, stacked over two to three weeks or more, that we didn't connect because we weren't looking for the pattern, only at the hard data.
Stepping back from each individual session and looking at the week or weeks may allow us to find the many signals that aren't in the data. It's our job to be constantly self aware and look for these signals before they create the "perfect storm".
Gratefully,
Mark
Team MPI
