Recovery and Detraining

When recovering from an over-reaching phase, with symptoms of heavy legs, lack of motivation, and poor performance, it's always hard to tell when I'm ready to start building again. When I first return to the road, my legs are usually still heavy, and performance is still lower, that could just be the detraining effects of time off. I sometimes wait  too long after recovery periods and lost more fitness than necessary -- and, at other times, come back too early and dug myself in a deeper hole than ever. These days, I'm trying to finesse the middle ground.