DaveLeeNC

Assume that you are on some semi-serious training plan. Per the plan today is a rest day and you are pretty tired. Tomorrow is scheduled to be some kind of hard effort day. However the realities of life are that there is little to no time for any bike riding tomorrow. So the question is what do you do today?

1) Struggle through a hard workout as best as you can (and make tomorrow a rest day)?
2) Take your badly need rest day today and get in the best workout possible tomorrow (might be nothing)
3) Do a moderate or maybe easy workout today and get in the best workout possible tomorrow
4) Something else

Just curious.

dave

valygrl

Rest. Ride the trainer tomorrow if you don't have time to train outside.

Machka 

2) Take your badly need rest day today and get in the best workout possible tomorrow (might be nothing)

Ursa Minor

Just do a 100 miler today and pray you don't hurt anything.

Charlie

Carbonfiberboy 

Moderate or easy ride today. Keep your volume up. Do whatever you can manage tomorrow. Moderate ride would be fine.

DBA

this!

caloso

This.

Hermes

This. The reason is growth is stimulated with hard efforts and actual growth occurs with rest. When one trains when tired, there is insufficient effort to create growth and the effort when fatigued just adds to fatigue.

Carbonfiberboy 

Interesting that so many are focused on rest. My favorite thing to do after a very hard ride of 3-4 hours is to do another ride of about the same length of time, but much less effort, zones 1 and 2. That produces quite a fitness bump. If I don't have the time for that, I will at least do 45' to an hour on my rollers, Z1, which is similar to low Z2 on the road. Much preferable IME to 2 days of rest, even if one is overcooked. 2 days of rest and watch that so-hard-to-get-back chronic training stress evaporate. You racer boys disagree?

We have a long, hard 2 pass ride for sure coming up on Sunday, so we will take Saturday off before it. If my wife's ankle weren't sprained and it were't going to rain, we'd do a 4-hour hike on Monday. We get good results from volume. As things are, we'll just do the roller ride on Monday.

DoubleTap

My coach would most likely tell me to take the rest day and do any exercise I could the next day, even if it's a walk or other type endurance exercise. Make day two at least an active recovery day, if you can't do your regular workout.

Hermes

I think if that works for you, you should do that every week and in about 3 months, you will be a UCI pro rider at age 68.

Carbonfiberboy 

I've been doing it this way for about 10 years and no team offers yet. I think the problem is that I lack talent. Also I'm old. However I've been able to keep up with talented younger riders and still can. Stoker and I went out yesterday and did 40 at 16.5, quite flat, only 750' climbing, average HR 115 or 78% of LTHR. Drank a bottle of water, didn't eat anything, strong at the end.

It took my about 5 years to figure out that the usual workout palette didn't work for me, or at least didn't work well. Too much intensity, not enough volume. A trad program would have me doing 5' interval sets on 3 days next week. Not going to happen. Since I can't train hard frequently, I try to ride and train smart. My biggest weakness is poor recovery. I find that my ability to recover improves if I stress that ability. So if I keep the training volume up and don't take much time off, my ability to recover improves. Obviously not the first week, but as you say, the 10th week is much better. I find that if I improve my ability to recover by forcing recovery during the training week, my ability to recover is better on long rides, where I alternate going hard and recovering in upper zone 3. Sounds kind of ridiculous, but after a long hard climb, one can recover at quite a high effort if one trains to do that. Thus if they drop me on the climbs, I can usually get them back just by being able to work harder for longer than most.

That chronic training stress thing really works. I've known that for a long time, but didn't have a metric for it until I got my Premium at TrainingPeaks.

Just passing this along to see what the folks with the elite coaches say.

1748357

I'd do #2 . That said, depending on how "badly" you need a rest day, maybe take both days off. That depends on how well you know your body, though.

wolfchild

I prefer to be active 7 days per week...I just got to do something physical each day or else I don't feel right. I like to push hard 3-4 days per week and then take active recovery on the remaining days of the week. Active recovery does wonders for me... I don't like "off days", where I just sit and do nothing at all...The only way I would ever take a rest day or day off, is if I was completely burnt out and overtrained which is very rare.

sprince

Yes, make time for the bike tomorrow even if it's only 20 minutes.