Fridays are my recovery days. 1-1.5 hours Z1-Z2 prescribed. But…it’s Friday! and sitting on a trainer for that long going light is boring!
What are your thoughts on skipping these recovery workouts? If I’m crushing intervals, I feel like having an extra day off to chill and live could be overall better. Do these light days have value add over doing nothing at all in the grand scheme of things?
I skipped mine today because my Oura ring told me my readiness wasn’t good. Wife and I celebrated an anniversary last night and a couple of glasses of wine seem to really affect that resting heart rate and variability. Overall, I’ve been doing my workouts easily at 102% so I felt like following the advice of the ring was the best choice. I do think the light days add value and I don’t want to make a habit of it, but I also think listening to your body is key. Listening to your mind is a little trickier. Sometimes it’s the angel that is reflecting what your body is feeling, but sometimes it’s the devil that tells you you don’t need that z2 ride.
Well I was replying to you on reddit, but I’ll reply here lol I, for one, like doing Pettit on Fridays. I already take monday completely off, my OCD wouldn’t let me also take Friday off! lol But I like Pettit because it feels just enough like a workout with the interval at 70% but it’s easy and dials back the stress ahead of the bigger weekend workouts.
Of course, today’s Pettit was way too easy, I’ve started using powermatch this week and my 70% interval had my HR barely above recovery, so gotta adjust the FTP upwards a bit! lol
Skipping it because sitting on the trainer for 1-1.5 hrs of endurance is boring = probably a bad habit
Skipping it because you’re cooked from Thursday’s workout, and want to nail the weekend = probably a good idea.
The endurance ride on Friday isn’t going to make or break your plan, but it does add value. So, if you’re sole reason for bailing is that it’s too boring, you’re probably leaving something on the table. If your legs are cooked, or you just need a mental break after a tough week, it’s better to sacrifice the Friday ride than muscle through it and not be recovered for the weekend workouts.
That shouldn’t be the norm, though, and if it is, you may consider reducing volume M-Th, or just removing the Friday ride every week to avoid decision fatigue/guilt of skipping, etc. Then if you’re feeling good one Friday you can add it in, instead of taking it out. Changes the perspective on it!
To me that doesn’t sound like recovery but rather an endurance ride.
The cumulative effect of 1.5 hours per week of Z1/Z2 is huge - 75 hours per year. IMO, the continuous aerobic work is the most important work we do to build fitness.