Fifty Plus (50+) - Recovery Rides and Power Rides

How many of you work a "power ride" into your weekly training schedule? I'm curious as to the effectiveness of having a day where you ride fewer miles but more intensely.

There is a hill in town that is about .7mi long with a gain of 135ft that I do reps on for a power ride. After doing several reps I'll swing down to the main drag and head out of town on a 20mph sprint to finish up the night at 8mi. As the reps go up, so will the mileage. When finished, I feel finished:D

Also, the "recovery ride". How far do you like to ride for a recovery ride? Same pace? Hills?

High intensity rides are vital. You need it in addition to the long base miles, if you want to be capable of high intensity efforts. Hill repeats are a great way to add intensity.

Recovery rides works best when they are really close in time to the harder rides, as they are intended to help cleanse your muscle of 'toxins'. Doing a 30 minute warm down works wonders. If I do a recovery ride on its own, it will be about 30 minutes (because that is the short version of my commute), at a really really slow pace. Keep the cadence up, but the spinning really easy. I cap my watts at about 150; heart rate no higher than the top of zone 1/bottom of zone 2.

I recently read a study which found that 2 hours of really really easy spinning, between time trial efforts, resulted in improved times for the second effort. Other methods (total rest, cold compression) resulted in slower times for the second effort. The study used 80 watts for the recovery - most people don't go that easy.

I do at least one, often two days per week of intense intervals. These typically occur on days when my time is limited.

Recovery rides for me only occur when I've pushed beyond my ability to fully recover within 24 hours. This does not happen on all interval days. I wish I knew what made the difference with some level of specificity, despite knowing I won't do the record keeping and investigation to find out. Generally, recovery rides are based on time in the saddle. I try to keep them under two hours and just spin while avoiding hard climbs.

My daily commutes are never aimed at training. Most people would call them leisurely, recovery type rides. So, I don't count them in terms of maintaining or improving on getting stronger, faster, or being able to go longer.

I do at least one, often two days per week of intense intervals. These typically occur on days when my time is limited.


Same here. I'm not up to the "two times per week" yet but at the least I'm not getting frustrated when schedules or rotten weather isnt conducive to a 2-3hr ride on the open road. Doing reps on the hill has greatly helped me overcome (duhhh) hills but also headwinds.

I recently read a study which found that 2 hours of really really easy spinning, between time trial efforts, resulted in improved times for the second effort. Other methods (total rest, cold compression) resulted in slower times for the second effort. The study used 80 watts for the recovery - most people don't go that easy.

I'd never have guessed or suspected that. Thanx for passing the info along.:thumb: