Should I adjust workout intensity on recovery workout?

I am doing intervals (Ericsson IF 0.8) on Tue and Carson (IF 0.81) on Thu with a ‘recovery workout’ (Carter IF 0.67) on Wednesday. Should I dial down the workout intensity of the Carson/recovery workout if my heart rate goes into zone 3?

I wouldn’t - it is only short but if your HR does go above about 70% in that session it may indicate that your FTP measurement is a bit high, or maybe you live somewhere hot and you don’t have a good fan ….or really worse case scenario in the current climate - you are coming down with an illness. :upside_down_face:

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Thanks

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The only thing I’ll say is that recovery workouts should feel like recovery. For me, 67% of FTP would be too high for a true recovery workout. I used to work with a coach who would counsel that power should never hit triple digits on a recovery ride.

Recovery is recovery. Tempo is something else. That’s the way it works for me.

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I think with these workouts it wouldn’t apply - neither Ericson or Carson are tough enough to need a recovery day - Carter is just some extra TSS filler in between - and it isn’t really that much of a taxing filler (I usually fill with Whorl if I’m at work or Fletcher if I’m not or go outside if it is sunny!). Now if you had a really tough o/u and vo2max session separated by a day then maybe something like Taku or Pettit -1 might been in order to recover but both of these are SS and not very challenging SS at that so it should be alright - I think some of these endurance days are misinterpreted - as Chad has said they are extra TSS without beating yourself up - not recovery - as you say if you just want a recovery ride then less than 50% FTP is the ticket…or I used to go for a swim when I did triathlon and did some drills :smile:

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Thanks, this makes a lot of sense. My mistake was assuming that Carter was a recovery ride.

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Well you will recover as they are not that intense but they are not designed as recovery rides :smiley:

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