As a novice to road cycling, and 47 years old, 50 miles is a long ride to me.
I did a 50 miler this weekend. What is the average length of time I can expect to need to rest until I can do another 50 or longer? I am hoping to do a couple shorter rides throughout the week to work on some technique issues I have.

I do four easy rides to every hard one. I'm 56 years old. Easy and hard are relative. As you get fitter, your formerly hard rides will become relatively easy. Make sure the easy ones really are easy and make sure you really want to do a hard ride; otherwise, rest up and let your body get stronger before breaking it down again.

My last hard ride was 400K. Yesterday, I did an easy 40 miles. To a complete Newbie, a 6 mile ride might be long.

Thanks.

No reason you can't do back to back 50 mile days provided you don't increase your weekly mileage too quickly - keep the increase under 10-20%/wk.

How quickly you recover depends on how hard you're riding. Best way is to just experiment. You might be surprised that it's not that hard to ride again the day after a long ride.

Great advice. Thanks.