Curious if anyone has experienced something similar coming out of a race, long event, etc. If I recall @Nate saying it took him something like 3-4 weeks to recover from Leadville. 10 days I ago I did a race that had me go real deep, talking ~0.95 IF for over 2.5 hours.
I had a nice taper into the event and was fresh with a positive TSB (+10), however, coming out of the event I’m still feeling fatigued. Legs just feel tired in general. Akin to coming out of a gym session.
Despite good sleep and nutrition I’m still not feeling fresh in the morning and on the bike I’ve noticed that I’m experiencing higher percentages of aerobic decoupling compared to rides of similar duration and intensity pre-race.
I took 2 days off post race and the remainder of last week was low intensity riding. This was meant to act as a recovery/deload week, but I’m not coming out of it feeling stronger or fresher.
Would you take more days off or do a week (this week) of all low-intensity rides.
Thanks for your input @hdas. I have 5 days off next week so I think we’ll keep everything super low this week and hopefully see a bounce back.
Interestingly, I did an over-under workout (Warlow -2) yesterday despite feeling a little heavy in the legs, thinking it was just the normal recovery week flatness I was experiencing. Good thing was that RPE wasn’t all that high and I completed the workout and felt great.
I do think some additional rest will be nice. This is the first time in my career that I’ve come out of an event still feeling tired over a week later. Maybe it’s because I’m 36.
When I experienced something that was probably functional overreaching, I rode z1 (< 50% FTP) for no more than 60min at a time until my legs started feeling back to normal / not like I got beat up with 2x4s. I dug myself a deep hole over 4-6 months and it took me 6 weeks of just z1 to get out of it. Looking at my CTL / ATL / TSB at the time just further confirmed to me that they are useful metrics to track, but only provide part of the picture. From how many interpret the metrics I should have been flying, but in reality I was completely crushed and took a while to recover.
That experience is one of the reasons I started using TR. I wanted that structure and pre-planned workouts to force me to take rest / recovery weeks and active recovery days during the week. I still think the metrics are useful, but pay a lot more attention to my body now and am more aggressive about throwing in recovery days or adjusting my plan based on perceived fatigue.
I vote for ignore metrics for a little while and don’t ride or ride z1 (Lazy Mountain) until your legs don’t feel like doody.
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Thanks, Craig. I can see how people dig these holes. Thankfully, I build in quite a few recovery days and always adhere to a rule of 2 full no-bike days after a long or really hard race. It’s helped a lot.
I have a feeling this particular race really did me in, and as you mentioned CTL doesn’t factor in life-stress.
I think more easy riding is in order until I rebound, which is what I knew, just wanted to hear other experiences. 
Thanks