I’ve just reached the end of SSB LV1 and am in my deload week. Tuesday I rode the trainer but, given that today’s workout called for an easier ride with little structure I thought I’d enjoy going for an outdoor ride and just cruising.
I train in the morning. I get up at 4.30am or so and am on the bike by 4.45am or 5. I don’t love getting up early and it sucks every morning I have to do it. However, I usually stuggle out of bed, pour myself some coffee and then suit up and get to work. This morning I was moving like molasses and even coffee and the promise of an actual bike ride failed to get my body moving. I struggled through an hour ride that was supposed to be about 140-160 watts and 44 tss. The numbers after the ride showed my tss was 29. I just didn’t have it to even go easy.
Sometimes I wonder why, at 49 (almost 50!) I continue to do this. LOL! But, then I’ll have a really good workout where I’m really satisfied after, or be at a local criterium and turn in a performance I’m proud of and I remember why I do all this solitary, very early morning work.
Do you have a lot of other things going on in your life at the moment? It could be a contributing factor. Might be that you’re juggling so many things and you need to give yourself some time to just unload.
Maybe you need a few days completely off the bike. From my old cross country running days, if you just didn’t have it in you, especially on what should be an easy run, the coach always said do nothing more strenuous than walking for 2-3 days.
some days you got it, some days you don’t. The recovery week of a block should be where you are kind of expelling all the fatigue you’ve built up so not too surprising that you kind of let it out. Taking today off and maybe tomorrow would be a good thing.
When I’m in the middle of a plan and I’m trying to really nail every workout, or at minimum, start every workout, I’ve experienced this on easy recovery days too. Take note of this moving forward and take the day off next time you’re not feeling it. Chances are you would have done more good by simply sleeping in this AM versus pushing through for what? A recovery ride or short z2 ride? What fitness is going to be gained from that? Very little, whereas the fatigue has increased, now you may need another day off to recover some freshness.
I think freshness doesn’t get the air time it deserves, to gain a new level of fitness we obviously have to learn to manage fatigue, but we shouldn’t have a “damn the torpedoes” approach to the plan either. Taking an unplanned day off when you need it should be seen as a way to find freshness both mentally and physically which then allows you to crush the really important rides/workouts.
Not that I would consider it a ‘failure’ but if one is going to bomb a workout, it could be worse than one of the rides during a recovery week.
I feel like crap during recovery weeks, and I agree, it feels weird not feeling great during the easier workouts and feeling fine during the loading weeks and the much more difficult workouts.
Sleep, or lack of, is a key factor and really makes a difference. Even in a recovery week. I have learnt it the hard way.
Are you getting enough sleep?
Btw, I also feel like garbage during recovery weeks, good to read it’s not uncommon.
Generally, sometimes I feel way WORSE during recovery weeks than in training weeks. I attribute it to the mental and physical release of the prior weeks’ training stress. Sort of like how I always seem to get sick on the first day of my 2 weeks of vacation at the end of the year after a few months of hard work running up to it. I also tend to stay up a little later or indulge in other less healthy/disciplined behavior during recovery weeks, if I am honest.
Specifically, this week has been HARD in the US. Highest covid cases on consecutive days and all the election noise on top of what is a heightened stress level already.
What’s your nightly average of late? What’s it normally?
If you’re getting up at 4.30am, you should be turning your light off around 9.30pm. Are you really doing that?
Anything less than 7 hours is not just suboptimal. It’s harmful. In a lot of different ways.
If it’s anything later than 10-10.30pm, the number of people who can manage optimally at that amount of sleep, expressed as a statistic, is ZERO. Check out a book called Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, or listen to his podcast visit on Joe Rogan for more details.
That book changed my life. Sounds like it might change yours too depending on your answers to my ponderings above.
I sleep a lot, and during the summer I was training 5-6 days a week. At one point I had a recovery week and cut short an hours very easy ride because I was feeling really low mentally, as though I was coming down with an illness, and absolutely hating the bike. I think I lasted 40minutes which included crawling home.
But that’s a sign of over training perhaps. A couple of days rest and I was back to killing workouts and got a great ftp bump overall
