Plan rest days?
 

Hey all, just got my bike 4 days ago, I haven't ridden in about 25 years but it's time to start being active again. I'm 63 with 2 stents and have ridden 3 of the 4 days. It rained the other day. I have a hybrid bike and I'm really liking it. I've started out pretty unambitious. 1 mile first day, 2 then 3 and tomorrow I plan to do 4 miles.
The question I have is should I plan rest days and a what intervals? I have no pain or soreness in legs and the saddle has felt the best on the 3 mile ride. My goal at this point is to do 5 miles then stay there for a couple weeks then gradually start to increase to ten miles,,,repeat ,,,etc. Is it beneficial to rest? My instincts tell me it should be but I would like your thoughts,, Thanks in advance!!

TB

IME it's beneficial to rest when you feel tired from riding. That said, not always. Sometimes it's beneficial to ride when you feel tired from riding. It's not too difficult to figure out which is which. Right now, you're gradually increasing the distance you're riding. Maybe you have a plan in mind for that. So you go out riding, wanting to ride some certain number of increased miles, but partway through, you feel like you can't pedal as hard as you did the last time. You're going slower and nothing to be done about it. In that case, pedal on home comfortably and take the next day off. Otherwise, keep going.

The usual advice on incrementing ride length is to keep track of your weekly miles. Try to increase your weekly total by ~10%/week. However, like compound interest, after some number of weeks you'll find this gets out of hand. So then cut it down to 5%. Another thing most folks do is to ride one longer ride each week, usually a weekend day, and then shorter rides the rest of the week. After a while, you can keep pushing the weekend ride to get longer, keeping the weekday rides about the same.

Thank you for your response. That sounds good. Thanks again!!
T

The theory is that the body gets stronger during rest and recovery between workouts. So, no rest, no improvement.

Works for me. At 62 I wasn't making much progress after two years of riding almost every day, around 20-40 miles, and doing one or two interval sessions a week.

By August 2019 I decided to modify my training. I switched to 4 days a week, resting between each. If I did a casual group ride, I'd ride farther before and after to make it a Zone 2 ride, and skip one of my usual solo workout rides.

And I switched from spinning around 90-100 rpm to mashing harder gears at 60-70 rpm. That resulted in significant improvements for me. My heart rate was no longer pegged for the same speed on familiar routes. Once I hit 160 bpm I'm pretty close to maxing out, and that happened often on fast group rides when I tried to spin 90-100 rpm. But when I switched to slower cadence and bigger gears my HR stays around 140-150, I don't get winded, I recover quicker and don't feel exhausted afterward.

But I approached the cadence change very gradually and methodically, adding some basic calisthenics including squats and lunges, to strengthen the knee joint. I worked mostly solo until I was sure I could handle the modified cadence in group rides.

But when I first resumed cycling in 2015 I hadn't been on a bike or worked out at all for almost 30 years. I was in terrible physical condition, although I wasn't much overweight. I'd been hit by a car in 2001, breaking my back and neck in six places. Walked with a cane until 2014. So it took a long time to recover just very basic fitness when I resumed cycling in 2015. I rode maybe 1-3 miles a day for awhile, and often had to stop every 400 yards to catch my breath. Took me a month before I could ride 10 miles, and even then I had to stop often to rest. I probably averaged 8 mph that first year back in the saddle. Improvements came more quickly by the second year. Anyone who's starting out with at least some basic fitness should be able to progress faster than I did.

If I still rode only casually, a few miles at a time, I could probably ride almost every day. And I'll probably get back to a more casual approach eventually. For now I'm motivated to maximize my fitness for the rapidly closing time window remaining.

Of course, even riding eight hours a day leaves 16 hours of rest for the body to recover. I've never seen any source showing adaptations from training are limited by recovery time (as opposed to fatigue limiting the performance expressed by those adaptations).

I find your phrasing a bit obscure. I think you're saying that for example: Some particular series of intervals will increase FTP or speed on the flat or at least the potential for that. That's the adaptation. However if one doesn't get enough recovery, one will not be able to ride at that higher FTP or speed on the flat until one is adequately recovered. Do I have that right? If so, correct IME.

Sorry I wasn't clear, but yes, that is what I was trying to say.

And to expand a little, a question I have is this. Let's say I do a workout that would lead to a certain adaptation and if I wait to stress that system until that adaptation is fully realized, it would create a benefit of magnitude 1. How would the magnitude of the benefit for doing the next workout before I'm fully adapted compare to doing it fully adapted (assuming I'm rested enough to perform the effort)? In other words if the first workout create a benefit of 1, would doing a second workout soon after create a benefit of 2, more than 2, less than 2?

Thanks guys for the replies. I have to tell you they mostly went right over my head. LOL . asgelle are you some sort of theoretical mathematician or physicist? It wouldn't surprise me. Since I've only returned to riding 5 days ago I'll let my legs decide on when to stop, slow down or keep going or to rest. I imagine in a while, I'll have a little more understanding of what I should do. Thanks again for the replies!1

T

Yeah, bookmark and come back a reread this thread in a couple months. It'll make sense then. Maybe. Hopefully more folks will chime in.

I think it depends on the intensity and what else one does during the 2 weeks surrounding the experiment. I don't think there's a simple answer. And "soon after" is too vague. But we'd all love to know your experimental results!

Everybody starts off like gangbusters in the beginning then burnout and stop riding altogether. Better to start off slowly, and plan your rest days in advance. You most certainly will need them. Don't wait until you burnout.

didn't read responses but don't plan days off. just take them when they occur (rain, appointment, etc.)

You're early in the process. I would say that at this point it's probably best to listen to your body and if you're tired, take a day off. Once you progress to the point where you could ride every day, then think about scheduling in some off days, maybe once every 3 or 4 days.

Listening to your body is a popular solution nowadays. Unfortunately the "body" is a reactive organism. By the time any evidence of stress shows up the problem has already occurred and the damage is done.A better solution would be prevention. That requires time, experience, and practice.

And exactly how does one perform this prevention without "listening to your body?"

What kind of damage does one riding day too many do?

Burst capillaries?

The experience of others who have already been down the road you're still traveling?

If I understand you correctly, you're saying I can show my training plan to someone with enough experience and they'ill be able to say this is the point where I'll need to take a rest without any feedback from me as to how I'm feeling along the way?

Now you're putting words in my mouth. Who said anything about not getting feedback?

If any doctor gives you a solution without knowing anything about your personal history then he's a quack. Even with that information when you go to see your doctor does he always give you a perfect diagnosis every time? What you're getting is his knowledge and experience oftentimes with other patients similar to yourself.

Thing is, you don't have to be a doctor to acquire that information. Other healthcare practitioners as well as experienced athletes can provide important information as well. After all, isn't that the reason why you're a member to this website?

Isn't that exactly what you're saying here:
Since you propose a better solution, I read this as in contrast to "listening to your body," i.e., feedback.

Listening to you body is something you do on your own. Giving "feedback" is something done in association with a doctor or healthcare practitioner. I can't even begin to see how you would interpret them as the same. In any event, no, that's not what I'm saying.

Well, then I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Did you really think people need to see a doctor to find out if they're tired enough to rest for a day? What if your doctor can't see you until next week?

Since KraneXL says by the time you can perceive a problem, the damage has already been done, I guess what they’re saying is you should schedule regular meetings with a professional before there are signs of excess fatigue. I wonder what markers would be used to identify that condition.

I surmise that the issue is that he injured himself weight lifting somehow, probably by, well, overdoing it. There's no warning for that one. When you've done it, you've done it. Don't ask me how I know. One could do that cycling training as well. You're 70 and climbing a pass or doing VO2max intervals and all of a sudden your HRM says 210. Not me, but friends. So stuff happens. But this and that have nothing to do with ordinary fatigue while cycle training.

Stuff also happens when you're carrying something and just step down and turn wrong. A friend's ski pass is now just a piece of useless plastic.

There are technical and non-techinical fatigue markers which one can monitor, for example morning resting and standing HRs, HRV, inability to raise a HR out of zone 2, poor sleeping, irritability, and others. I got so tired once that I couldn't raise a HR over 105 no matter what I did.

But riffing on "the damage has already been done," hey, damage is what we're after! Nothing happens without a little damage. Like I say, if it didn't hurt, I wouldn't be doing it. ;) Not really, but it's a comforting attitude.

According to a fairly recent trend, heart rate variability can help identify training and recovery problems that may not manifest obviously enough just going by how we feel.

I was skeptical about HRV when I first heard about it, but in retrospect that was because the videos and articles were trying to sell products and programs rather than just inform consumers. Too many of the proponents made the mistake of chattering enthusiastically about meditation, mindfulness, biofeedback and pop psychology buzzwords that trigger my skepticism. So I ignored the whole HRV thing for a year or so.

However -- possibly because I mentioned it to a friend on Facebook or clicked on an article -- Google news and other news aggregators I use recently began suggesting stories on HRV. (That's one of the benefits of enabling tracking for some purposes.) An article mentioned Wattson Blue and Elite HRV apps, so I've been using both for a couple of weeks. Wattson Blue uses the phone camera and steady light for fingertip readings -- seems crude but it works reasonably well.

Elite HRV does sell products but also works with other brands of heart monitors, including my Wahoo Tickr, so that's what I use. However pairing the Tickr to Elite HRV is a chore. Some days it takes up to 10 minutes of repeated fiddling, phone reboots, etc, to get the damned thing to work with the Tickr. This is the most common complaint about Elite HRV from people who've tried the app. So I tend to use it only once a day to minimize the frustrations. When it works the information is useful.

Generally speaking results from these HRV apps tend to correspond with how I perform that day in bike rides and workouts -- good and bad. Due to injuries (hit by cars twice in less than 20 years, busted up neck, back and shoulder), illness (Hashimoto's, a pesky but non-fatal autoimmune disorder that killed my thyroid after years of gradual deterioration), surgery for thyroid cancer, and just being older (62 now), I rarely feel well in the morning. I can remember exactly one day in all of 2019 when I woke early and ready to join a group bike ride. Most days it's a chore just to drag my carcass out of bed, pee and get some coffee. If anyone asked me on a typical morning if I planned to ride my bike later that day, I'd say not only no, but hell no.

Pain is no longer a useful indicator of my fitness or capacity for exercise on any given day. (This gets into a whole nuther realm of pain management and science, which is being investigated by a UT Dallas team of researchers, who are studying why pain persists long after an injury has healed, and how to safely relieve useless pain, while not masking valid pain signals that indicate a current, possibly serious injury that shouldn't be ignored.) But I'm not gonna take fistfuls of opiates (even though I can get 'em from my doc). And I'm not gonna sit around moping on the sofa, tempting though it may be. But it would help to have a tool to give me some hints about when I should rest and when I should get busy. Because my body isn't handling those guidelines anymore.

So on days when the HRV apps indicated my body appeared to have had adequate rest, nutrition, etc., and I went ahead and rode and/or worked out, I usually felt pretty good. Even made some progress after having plateaued for months. And there have been a couple of days when I felt the same as usual in the morning -- miserable, achy and exhausted -- and the HRV apps warned that either the results were skewed by glitches, or my body was out of whack and I should rest. On both days, I had indeed been extremely stressed out by life stuff and hadn't eaten properly or slept well for a day or two. And the post-workout HRV checks also seem to reflect the intensity of my rides and workouts.

Now, there may be some placebo effect, wish fulfillment,etc. --- basically, the HRV data showing me what I wanted or expected. But for many things in life, that's just as valid as purely physical issues, in terms of how it affects our perceptions of well being.

So, HRV may be useful for some folks who are serious about training, or pursuing fitness, and either usually wake feeling great or, in my case, usually feel like cold poo every morning, regardless of what our bodies are actually capable of.

Just to add to your strategy here: when in doubt, be conservative. Taking a day off here or there isn't a big deal. Adding miles a bit more slowly isn't a big deal. Getting an overuse related health issue may result in weeks or months off. That is a big deal. It's not how fit you are 3 weeks from now that matters, but how fit you are 3 months or 3 years from now. In the long run, consistency matters.

One other overlooked factor in consistency: enjoyment. If you're dreading riding on a given day, take the day off. If the weather is terrible, take the day off. It's great to have a plan and a schedule, but recognize that 100% adherence to that plan is likely impossible. If you do 85% to 90%, you'll get almost all the benefit with far less stress.