Carbonfiberboy 

I run into a particular limiter every year. It's recovery. The older I get, the slower my recovery is. I don't have much of a problem recovering during the winter because the workouts are not that intense or long. But starting in late spring, my rides become both long and intense, and I run into two problems: 1) recovering during the ride, between mountain passes for instance, and 2) recovering between long rides.

As I spend more time recovering between difficult rides, my weekly mileage begins to go down, my fitness begins to drop off, and difficult rides become an ever greater strain on my system, leading to even longer recoveries and a performance drop-off. A long time ago, I asked Pete Penseyres how I could improve my multi-pass ride performance. He said, "More base." Sage advice, and it works. That definitely helps with multi-effort recovery. But how to recover between rides? Perhaps more base? But how to get and maintain it?

I thought about that for a long time and this year decided to try a new training approach. First I decided to get more base by riding my bike more. Since I already was working out about as much as I could handle without overdoing it, that meant giving up working out in the gym, weight-lifting, etc. Weight workouts really stress my system. So I decided to put that energy into effective cycling time instead of using it to build weight lifting strength.

I also thought about how I could squeeze some more miles into each week without burning out. I noticed that many strong riders I know are bike commuters. They always say they take it easy on the way to work and get their workout on the way home. I live where I work, so I decided to "commute" on my rollers every weekday morning. I get up, have a cup of coffee, and put in ½ hour of zone 1 on my rollers. Then I have breakfast. So that's really free riding time - no penalty from it making me tired because the effort is so low. And yet it's 2.5 hours more riding time per week. That's a bunch.

I've been doing this for 10 weeks now, and it's working well, better than I expected. I am recovering faster and can do more and harder workouts. My hard efforts are harder and at a higher HR than they were last year under my old training plan, which had a mix of biking, weights, and cross training. What a shocker, huh? Ride your bike more and go faster, eh? The trick for me was finding a way to ride my bike more and recover faster between rides.

A question often asked on this forum is, "What are recovery rides for?" I think I have an answer. They are essentially free time on your bike. You can do as much of it as you want without burning out. Yet they do count as time on the bike. They do increase fitness. Another thing recovery rides do is change your metabolism a little. I find I can eat a smaller breakfast after a zone 1 morning ride. I'm just not as hungry. And my legs do feel more recovered when the time comes for my evening ride, so I think the increased circulation and changed metabolism must prepare the body for future work.

As I age, I have to keep finding new ways to train more effectively so I don't slow down. So far so good: this year I've found a new way to squeeze in more training.

BTW, for my zone 1 roller rides, I ride at a steady 68% of LT. That seems just right. If you don't know where that is, it's just below where you start to breathe deeply and slowly, and is about the point where most people begin to sweat.

arexjay

Do you find that chopping up these "base" or zone 1 miles has a negative impact (or, provides less impact) compared to doing all your riding at once? Simply put, is 3 hours in zone 1 more effective than two 1.5 hour rides or two .5 hour + one 2 hour ride (or any other combination of rides adding up to 3 hours) in zone 1?

Carbonfiberboy 

What does "more effective" mean? For me, more effective zone 1 rides are those that have the least impact on my system. 1/2 hour/day definitely has little impact. If I replaced the morning rides with a single 3 hour zone 1 ride, it would take away from more useful (stressy) rides which I do in the evening, so I'd get in less training. I already do a longer zone 1 ride in the evening of the day after my weekly Big Ride, or else I go hiking or snowshoeing in zone 1 that day. And I think it's the every-dayness of that morning ride that works. For those stronger and younger than I, and those who can go to bed earlier or don't work, a full hour/morning of zone 1 would be even better. And for those who are really, really young, like under 40, an hour of zone 2 is probably even better!

I have to recover every day from the previous day's ride, and I think these little stints on the rollers in the morning help with that. Basically, I'm trying to get my weekly mileage up, and this is a "free" way to add another 40 miles or so. Plus it does seem to have some recovery benefits.

127.0.0.1

when the season gets intense spend more time on dorky granny rides.


your fitness will improve bike-speed wise constantly, but your body will breakdown. hence, fall CX racing and winter hibernation to go do it all again next spring

FitForever

I had a VO2 test last year and discovered I was burrning carbs to much in zones 1 and 2 (50%). This meant that when I cycled hard in zones 4 and 5 I was using almost all carbs and over stressing my legs. This over stressing required 2 days of recovery. I was told to slow down and cycle in zones 1 and 2 for long periods to train my body to burn fat. They said my fat/carb % in these 2 zone should be 75/25. Well I changed my cycling habits dramitically and it worked. My body burns more fat in all zones now and now when I am in zones 4 and 5 I am producting less lactic acid. I recover in 24 hours now. My best workout has been attending 3 spinnng classes a week during when I keep my heart rate in zones 1 and 2. I am a firm believer in base training now before cycling hard.

arexjay

That's interesting. Is there any science/studies to back this up?

arexjay

I understand now, I guess I misread or misunderstood your original post somehow.

I might give that a try this summer. I'd imagine an hour of Z1/Z2 before breakfast would be a nice way to kick-start my metabolism and get rid of that sore/stale/jell-o feeling they often get after an intense ride the day before.

I try to stagger my intense days with my long-distance, less intense days as much as possible, but sometimes I end up doing intense intervals/hills two days in a row. But I'm young, so I guess I can recover more easily.

Carbonfiberboy 

This makes sense, but how does a VO2 test tell what your energy sources are? What's the test mechanism for determining that?

Did you change your hours/week of training? How many hours/week are you training? Did you add the spin classes to your training, or do you substitute those easy workouts for other more intense workout?

andre nickatina

Well, after reading your post I think I'm gonna try out doing more recovery rides. A lot of time my "recovery" rides are just easy commuting but sometimes I sprint for traffic lights or something. I'm gonna see about more roller spins after hard days.

One thing I've found - every Thursday I do a hard competitive group ride. Like, cat 1/2/3's all trying to ride each other's legs off on a rolling, 26 mile loop. At the end of the ride everyone does a 20-30 minute slow spin back into town, which is good, but what I've noticed is really great is if I'm off the bike for a few hours and then get back on later that day, get some more slow spinning down, and then rest. Makes all the difference, I'm much less sore the following day if I can do that.

daxr

There's a lot that goes into recovery, so there's no short or complete answer, really. One thing I worked out last year was that to get up over 600 miles a month I had to sleep more, and to sleep more I had to start taking melatonin. Or at least I did start taking it and it did help, particularly after hard days.

Protein intake is also important, so I add some hemp seed protein powder to breakfast in the mornings, eat more generally, and make it a point to eat something good immediately after every ride to start the recovery process.

That's a couple of things anyway. I do find that by commuting I can do four hard 6 mile rides in a day easy (going home for lunch) and it does seem to have as good or better an effect as one hard 24 mile ride.