Mild Stallion

Are recovery days in order on the trainer as well as during the road season? I have been doing various interval workouts with the occasional tempo ride on the trainer 3 days a week since early November.

It's kept my fitness up since I went indoors, but I'm starting to get muscle cramps when I wouldn't before.

LowCel 

I do a 75 minutes recovery once or twice a week on the trainer. I keep my wattage at 56% of my threshold or lower. So basicly I ride like a grandma for 75 minutes.

Here is the actual workout description from TrainingPeaks.

Mild Stallion

I've heard the term "Guilt-producingly slow" to describe a proper recovery pace - it sounds like you follow the adage.

If you're doing a 75 minute recovery twice a week, it sounds like you're doing more time in the saddle than I am (about 4-5 hours/week). I don't race, but I like to stay fit and challenge myslef a bit.

I was considering doing a short, easy ride - about 30-45 minutes at an easy resistance. I don't have a power meter so I will need to listen to my body.

Nickel

If I do a hard workout or weightlifting in the morning, I like to do 30-60min easy spinning on the trainer, either the next day or later that night.

ericgu

Yeah, real recovery rides are really slow. It's considerably slower than a "take it easy ride". For me, a take it easy ride might put my heart rate at around 100, while a recovery ride is closer to 80 BPM.

That's slow.

Mild Stallion

Thanks for the input. I never thought I'd be inspired to ride super slow.

SS_MB-7

Me, too. I'm in the middle of a Rest Week, which means even more recovery rides

Did you buy a training plan from TrainingPeaks? How do you find it? I contemplated it, but as for now, I'm using a modified program based on the examples in the back of the "Training and Racing with a Power Meter" book. Over the last couple of weeks, I've tweaked the workouts and adapted them to my FTP, etc. Seems OK so far.

Dago

I've been thinking about this. I've been doing a trainer workout every second day which is working pretty well except my legs don't really recover in one day. They don't feel sore or anything but just weak. Like if doing intervals with the same average hr my power output is surely less than when totally recovered (no power meter though but I'm fairly sure). Should I just keep doing it like this and thus familiarising my legs to this routine or is there something else I could do? But I'd really like to be able to get used to riding often since the summer doesn't last infinitely

Tbh. recovery rides don't sound too good, intervals are fun on a trainer but just plain pedaling is reaaaally boring (even with music and videos). Maybe take two days off every two trainer sessions or something?

Mild Stallion

You definitely need to do a recovery ride once in a while. At least every other week. I used to doubt the benefit of recovery rides, but they really do work. VERY light intensity, for about 30 minutes should have an impact.

Perhaps you could do a recovery ride the day after a hard interval ride, and then take the next day off. That can really work out the kinks.