Training & Nutrition - Recovery Rides

Question. What exactly is a recovery ride, and what is it's purpose ??? And should I be utilizing them ??

A real good ride will do microscopic damage to the muscle fibers in your legs, etc. These take awhile to rebuild, and when they do, you come out even stronger. But this rebuilding / healing takes time. If you over-train, you don't give your body time to rebuild the muscle and tissue damage. Consequently, the damage can grow progressively worse.

A recovery ride will give you a warm-up, and light exercise to keep your heart rate in an aerobic zone, but without over-stressing the muscles that are trying to rebuild themselves.

Since the repair of muscle tissue in the legs can take a couple of days, and yet you probably want to continue to get the aerobic benefits of another day of exercise, a recovery ride may be the proper recipe.

For a recovery ride, you're looking for lower intensity, but still bringing your heart rate into the aerobic range for 20-30 minutes or so. If yesterday's intense ride involved a lot of climbing, a lot of distance, and/or a lot of speed, today's ride should be a somewhat slower pace, more flat, and shorter distance. This gives the muscles time to rebuild. Your next intense exercise should come as the muscle's strength peaks, not as the muscle's strength is compromised by yesterday's difficult ride.

A recovery ride is a reeeaaalllly easy ride that you do after you have done a few hard rides, and your muscles are in need of recovery. A recovery ride is more beneficial than not riding at all, i don't know why, but trust me, it is. When you do a recovery ride, go easy...almost too easy. The only thing you should focus on is having a higher cadence...average speed, doesn't matter in a recovery ride.

A recovery ride may help prevent deep vein thrombosis (blood clots) by getting the blood pumping a little faster for a while. DVT is a significant risk among endurance athletes, including cyclists who do centuries in hot weather.

To add to what others have said, I've found it useful to have an HRM for these, as it's easy to go too hard on a recovery ride. I usually shoot for 60-65% of my max HR, which for me is about 105 bpm.

I've noticed that if I do this for 20-30 minutes at the end of a hard ride, my legs feel better almost immediately. I've not noticed any difference between doing a recovery ride on a "rest" day and simply doing nothing, but I'm not as hard-core as some folks.

Question. What exactly is a recovery ride, and what is it's purpose ??? And should I be utilizing them ??


It's the 150km you do on smooth roads the Monday after Paris-Roubaix.

:D

A recovery ride may help prevent deep vein thrombosis (blood clots) by getting the blood pumping a little faster for a while. DVT is a significant risk among endurance athletes, including cyclists who do centuries in hot weather.

is this the condition where your heart rate is so slow at rest that you risk getting blood clots in the veins from slow-moving blood?

...

don't you need to be a really serious cyclist to get to that point?

is this the condition where your heart rate is so slow at rest that you risk getting blood clots in the veins from slow-moving blood?

...

don't you need to be a really serious cyclist to get to that point?

I don't know what you consider to be a really serious cyclist, but if you ride in the heat and get dehydrated, then you are at risk of DVT. Endurance athletes (not just cyclists) are typically at more risk than casual riders.

A recovery ride, or any light exercise that gets the legs moving and the blood flowing, may possibly help avoid DVT. Other things that may help are to rehydrate as quickly as possible after a long ride, especially in hot weather, and to avoid postures that restrict blood flow to the legs.

Interesting...I've never heard of DVT associated with endurance athletes. Can you reference some sources that I could read?