Training & Nutrition - Ok to ride, then ride again 12 hours later?

I'm just wondering there's some sort of unwritten rule about waiting a certain number of hours after a ride. We're riding (mountain biking) probably tonight after work, then we usually go for a early Wed. morning ride. Wed. AM is going to be an interval training kind of thing. (thanks for the advice on my previous post, I have this perfect trail in mind for intervals.) Tonight's ride will be the longer of the two and has more elevation gain.

So go easy on tonight's ride or does it even matter? I'm familar with the waiting 48 hours between weight liftings, but not sure about riding. Just curious.

People who tour ride daily, sometimes as much as 12 hours, then sleep, then ride again.

On organized rides such as "Ride the Rockies" this is common also.

Folks who do Randonneuring (sp??) ride for days at a time without any rest at all.

As long as you are not getting too tired or getting into overtraining, and if you work yourself up to this slowly, not all at once, it should be fine.

I'll be riding across Australia later this year.

We'll be riding an average of 160km a day over 32 days with only 4 rest days. We won't be racing but we'll still have to put in a fair effort. Some days we'll ride almost 200km several days in a row.

In tours like the Tour de France they ride around 200km or more at race speed day after day.

Well there is a trick to endurance riding. I have seen people on multiple day tours go belly up.

If you look at training schedules, they tend to alternate intense rides with easier rides such as a day with intervals followed by a long ride at a moderate pace.

If you are going to do intervals, try to lay off a bit the day before and day after.

In case anyone wanted to know, we didn't go for our 7am ride this morning. I had a REALLY tough time just getting out of bed this morning. We rode yesterday and I kind of made that my interval day.

All my summer activities are making me soooo tired these days. Same for hubby too.

I didn't think of thoses people that do tours. But the one poster made a good point about varying the intensities, etc. if you ride back to back days. So based on last night's ride, today would be a perfect rest day for me.

Its probably good to NOT RIDE at least one day a week. I alternate long easy ride days with short intense ride days, trying to build endurance and strength. The body needs time to build and recover. Exercise actually tears down the muscles, the body then needs to rebuild and strenghten the muscle. So if you ride hard every day, your body doesn't get a chance to repair. Its the same with weight training.

i was riding everyday, sometimes twice a day... base miles and then training.. once i started to put a lot of mileage on the rides, i took time to cross train.. or you can use that time to rest. personally i found that if you do too much of a good thing(cycling :) ) then you can burnout fast. take your time build up your endurance and do some other sports inbetween. Roller blading , running and rowing are great cross training exercises.
i started upping my running and lowered my cycling a bit to get ready for some duathalons in the fall.
if your body says... i am tired.. give it a rest.. there is always later in the day or the next to ride, right? the idea is to have fun :)

Ever heard of Randonneuring, Ultra-Distance cycling, or the RAAM? On the longer Randonneuring brevets, for example, we will do 600 kilometers all in one shot in under 40 hours. Sometimes we sleep, sometimes we don't. If we sleep, it will only be for a couple hours and then we're back on the bicycle again. In training we often ride back to back centuries and metric centuries.

http://www.rusa.org/
http://www.ultracycling.com/
http://www.raceacrossamerica.org/

If thousands of Randonneurs, Ultra-Distance riders and RAAM riders can get back on the bicycle again after only a couple hours of sleep, 12 hours off the bicycle is plenty!

However, having said that, it is good to take a day off now and then or we can risk burnout.