cappuccino911

So just did my first century yesterday. I feel pretty good today. I'm curious as to what others habits are post ride. If you could state your weight and usual amount of weekly/monthly riding as well it would probably be helpful.

mike868y

130lbs, ~200mi/week while in season. After a century, I come home, eat a lot, take a nap (or go to bed early depending on the time) and try to get a good nights sleep. I generally take it easy for a couple of days (3 tops), and other than that, nothing special.

Psimet2001 

I used to just try to recover right afterwards and then ride - albeit in more of a recovery fashion - the next day. After that you're golden.

StanSeven

+1. Yep. That's what I do.

echappist

all depends on how much you are accustomed to.

I'm entering my second year of dedicated cycling. Back in April and May, i did two rides, 95 miles each. I basically rode the day after as i didn't burn myself out on the rides. I think i was 160lbs at 13% BF. But this is coming off of a few weeks of racing and a few weeks of 180 mile/week riding. I think i ended up doing 260 miles during the weeks i did the 95 milers, but i did make sure to take at least one day off per week.

OTOH, if you make me go do a century today, i'd be dead for 3 days...

ak47clown

i went for a 6 mile run today and won't ride tomorrow morning but will go to my cardio kicboxing class after work (my primary reason for the stamina and cardio that I have today). Overall, I felt pretty good today-definitely felt some tension in my quads but no soreness

cappuccino911

I took today off the bike. Taught my bootcamp class and did minimal jogging in the process and rode mybike the whopping mile to the park and back but everything feels pretty good though my legs don't have much oomph getting up and down 5 flights of stairs to my apt. Since i have more of a strength training background I can say my legs feel kinda like the way they would feel after a good hard leg workout after which I would take 2 full days off before doing another hard workout. Perhaps I'll walk 18holes tomorrow and get back on the bike tuesday.

JoelS

Rode a century last Sunday. Took it easy for the next day and then went right back to my normal riding. Rode 84mi today. I might go ride tomorrow, definitely on Tuesday.

botto 

depends.

cappuccino911

i did that, it was one of the best 6 packs I ever drank. Tried to go out to 2 friends bday parties and was falling asleep at the bar at 9:30pm!

lovestoride

thank god your back

akansaskid

I've done 7 moderate (for me) centuries in 7 straight days this year. On the other hand, if I go out and absolutely hammer one (again, relatively speaking), then I'd do an easy 20-25 mile recover ride the next day. (147 lbs, lots of miles)

Machka 

In the past, when my fitness level was pretty good sometimes I'd ride a century ... and another right away ... and another. As a part of my randonneuring, the 300K brevet was usually a double century, the 400K brevet was 2.5 centuries, the 600K brevet was about 3.75 centuries, the 1000K was 6 centuries, and the 1200K was 7.5 centuries.

But other times I'd just ride the one century, and then either ride a shorter distance the next day or take the day off.

coasting 

I like to use it as an excuse to go wild with stuffing my face. I won't state my weight for that reason.

jdon

thank god you are back
subtract "a", add "'"
thank god you're back

otherwise you are thanking god for his back.

Sorry, someone had to say it.

jdon

There are a lot of variables that determine recovery time. Well rested, well hydrated and well trained, multiple consecutive century rides aren't a problem. Begining of the season is a different story though. I can take a two day recovery after a 75 mile ride.

cappuccino911

well I took all of sunday off to watch football other than a short 3 miles total going to and from Central park to teach a class. Monday and tuesday the weather has been terrible here. Today is the firt nice day. I really wanted to get out yesterday and was hoping for a window of even 1 hour to get out and there just wasn't one. It's going to be terrible out tomorrow as well. My body feels pretty good, I assume there are no limits as to my approach to riding today? I realized that I really need to get better on the hills, even if I am a clyde. Any reason I shouldn't go out and do some hill repeats or should I look to make my first ride after the century something with a little more length to it?

umd

these

kleinboogie

I take a day off which I do after most hard efforts. GL

slowandsteady

Here is what not to do....which I did.

Ride 156 miles in two days, then take off two weeks. It was hard getting back into the groove after that.

I recommend taking off no more than two days.

big john

Don't recall seeing an apostrophe in quotes before.

echappist

hill repeats are probably not the best thing to do now (or for another five-six months for that matter). Here's a few reasons why.

1. You mentioned you are just starting to cycle seriously, and i'd assume your cycling base isn't that strong. Had it been strong, you wouldn't have needed to take 3-4 days off after a century. Just go to central park and do some endurance work (zone 2) to clear out any remaining metabolites out of your leg. If you feel like it, after a week or two or endurance ride (long ride, low intensity), throw in zone 3 (tempo) training.
2. In the same sense as mentioned above, a lack of strong base will not afford you the necessary physiological adaptations to do hill repeats. Normally, hill repeats are VO2 max interval at 5 minutes per interval, done when you have a load of zone 4 (lactate threshold work) done. This doesn't sound like the case
3. There's no hill nearby for you to do intervals. Harlem hill is what you do for anaerobic intervals, not hill repeats.
4. This may sound counterintuitive, but climbing hills isn't necessary for you to improve your performance on hills. Right now, you probably are cooking yourself quite a bit when you go up, sending you into lactate threshold if not deep into anaerobic mode. You get better when the effort required is lowered to high aerobic mode (below threshold) and then tempo, etc. The preferred method to accomplish this is to lay down a huge cycling base for a while, then throwing in tempo workouts and sweet spot training (just below threshold). Then threshold work. While building base, you should probably go up very slowly on hills. In my case, if i see a delivery man on 40lb bike hauling a huge load of cargo up a hill, i don't chase. Right now, i'd go 8-9mph on harlem hill even though when i do my threshold training, i go at 15.

PS. It's highly recommended that you purchase Cyclist's Training Bible by Joe Friel as it gives you a good idea on how to lay out a training plan

Nachoman

Personally, I like to go on a light spin the day after a century.

cappuccino911

Good info. Just to restate, I took 3 days off not because I needed to, but becaues of the weather. On sunday my legs knew they had worked and walking up and down my 5 flights of stairs wasn't a blast but it was totally doable. YEsterday i physically felt great, it was just too damn wet out and since there isn't much traffic in Central park I know those roads don't dry out nearly as fast as the avenues that get traffic on them constantly.

Regarding my "base" yes, i started cycling in late february. I set an informal goal for myself back in April of 250 miles a month. I've hit that goal every month and gone up over 300 once or twice. When i go out today, I will cross the 500 mile mark for this month. In my 7 months on the bike I have about 2000 miles in. Add to that athletically I was already pretty fit and strong as opposed to a couch potato starting completely deconditioned all around.

REgarding my current strategy, I presently do go up hills pretty slowl. I never get out of the saddle because of my torn up left knee. the leg is strong but fear of a ghost shift while standing on the pedals kept from doing it starting out and now it's just habit, riding in the seat constantly feels pretty natural. because I'm a clyde I have some pretty easy climbing gears so I do tend to spin up the hills.

When I do 4 laps around the park, the first time up harlem hill always feels pretty easy. I can get up it no problem inthe middle ring and not on my largest cog in the back. By the time lap 4 comes around I'm grinding in my granny gear. When I do 4 laps, it takes me about 1hr 23 minutes. And my heart rate usually averages around 160 which is right around what I estimate my threshold to be. I must admit, 4 laps in central park feels pretty tough, when I go out and just ride elsewhere, I feel like I'm working hard by my heart rate stays much lower. The combo of rolling hills in the park makes me work. In the past i had only been doing these 4 lap rides once a month at best sometimes less frequently than that but I feel like that is the next step, to really start doing more of those rides where it gets my intensity up. My knee hasn't been giving me much trouble at all and I feel strong. Is doing these laps around the park a good next step? I enjoy getting out of the city and doing random long rides through the boroughs and the nature of all the traffic lights and stuff keeps the heart rate down. It's a struggle to find a place where I can ride and go hard other than the park.

When I do these laps, should i make it a point to go very easy up harlem hill the first couple of times around, even though I feel really strong and capable of going harder?

DScott

Do you want average time?