I’m curious what everybody’s recovery week looks like. Not including tapers, just a standard recovery week with the plan to start another block the following week. So if you’re doing a 3+1 or 4+1 schedule, what does “recovery” mean to you?
Do you drop total hours? Do you drop your intensity days? Do you drop TSS but maintain hours? Do you do any intensity at all?
I ride 10-12 hours, around 500-550 TSS, usually 2 or 3 intensity days. For my upcoming recovery week, the plan was to maintain the hours on the bike, but drop all intensity days and just do Z2, which would drop the TSS. Just curious what you guys do.
I’m pretty bad at sticking to what TR prescribes for recovery weeks, I think they’re too long and too easy, and then instead of feeling rested and ready for the next block my legs just feel heavy, like I’ve detrained. So I usually keep the low intensity weekday recovery rides, and bump the intensity and duration of the weekend ones (e.g. I might do achievable/productive Z2 rides like Lachat or Boarstone over the weekend instead of the prescribed recovery rides). That usually makes me feel more primed for the upcoming block than doing a whole recovery week.
For me it’s dependant on the type of work I have been doing leading up to that week.
If it was a very stressful block (vo2) then I reduce the hours significantly and remove basically all intensity until just before I restart.
For a threshold block I don’t do nearly the same reduction of volume but will also have at least a bit of interval work during the week.
I also find that it changes from person to person what they deal with best and how much volume they are doing (generally the higher the volume the easier the recovery weeks).
Just finished a rest week. Felt good already on Thursday so did some 30/30s. 40/20s on the weekend. Normally no intensity before weekend if I’m still fatigued.
I was averaging 18+ hours per week before this for 2 blocks.
Generally I perform best with about -5 ramp rate getting my form back to positive 5 ish. This has me remove all intensity except bringing back a few short opening efforts and some sprints on Saturday along with upper z2. My hours and TSS are about 65% of my last highest load week.
Yeah, have a think about what recovery week’s objective is for for you, that workouts don’t recover you, that some work is needed to minimise backwards progress and that relatively speaking anaerobic capability fades much faster than endurance.
During builds/specialty I keep the hours within 80% of normal load and frequency the same. I ride 5 days a week and 12-15 hours a week. So a typical recovery week ranges anywhere from 8-10 hours. I have an FTP of 350w so during the weekdays nothing over an 1.5hr ride and I keep the wattage 190 or lower (.5-.55IF) on my friday through sunday rides I ride 2-3.5 hours no structure but light for sure. Will noodle around 215-230w not caring about coasting or constant pressure. Just enjoying the ride. Typically on Sunday I’ll “open up” but no structure. I’ll hit tempo on a long climb (10-15min) and maybe a 105% of ftp for 2ish minutes with the rest of the ride pure noodling.
I will add that my 3 week builds have no recovery rides as I take 2 days off the bike every week, so every workout is challenging during these builds. By the last few days of the build block I am at my limit. If I’m still feeling alright after 3 weeks my coach will add some “empty the tank” workouts until I tell him I’m ready for rest.
When I restart my build following a very easy rest week, the first workout is an “opener style” workout. If you follow Alex Wild it is very similar to his coach’s approach.
I do 3 days on, 1 day off. 1 of the 3 days is a long endurance+ day with low threshold efforts. Think .75IF with 10-20 min “sweet spot” mixed in there. These types of workouts are not as taxing as one might think. Ymmv but ive been training a long time and these are reletively “easy” to recover from.
The other two days are ftp gainers during build blocks (think pure threshold efforts tied with finishing vo2 max work at the end of the threshold interval). These workouts are structured so that interval length increases as fitness increases. These workouts seldom exceed 2.5 hours and full length recovery of 5-7 min between efforts. Im talking like 150w max between intervals. Just keeping the bike upright. The real work is in the intervals.
And during specialty it is almost exclusively vo2 and anaerobic work. In the beginning of the season its done in the beginning of a long endurance ride, then progressively gets added to the latter end (these are 4-5 hour rides). The mid-week rides will have 1 touch up threshold session and a very intense vo2 session no longer than 1.5 hours.
This is why my recovery weeks are essentially nothing other than retaining frequency and caloric burn.
This is definitely not something id recommended to a new rider, this is training for people who maybe experience a 3-5% increase in fitness a year…if they absolutely nail everything.
The point I want to hammer home is recovery needs to be executed as well as the actual work. Maintaining riding frequency is essential. Don’t hammer it for 3 weeks then just let your bike sit in the garage for a week. Also don’t spin around during your recovery week anything over .6IF. My TSS is basically half or less than half during the recovery week.
~75% of my usual hours, all Z1-2, the extra time saved from cycling is spent sleeping, doing yoga or other stuff that helps recovery and relaxation. I’ll still lift but just one set per exercise instead of 3-4. Extra focus on nutrition as don’t want to undereat but equally I’m burning a lot less carbs with the drop in volume and intensity and that means cutting right back on the sugar intake.
For me, it just means not doing anything hard. I still do my commutes, maybe some extra credit riding for fun. Probably still running. But I don’t do anything to get my heart rate up or feel a burn in my legs.
For me, it’s just turning way down my tues/thurs hard days and turning them into easy Z2 days. Maybe skip the wednesday easy z2 day as well. But it’s usually a dramatic volume reduction. I’ll push up to 1000+ tss in my hard weeks and cut that in half during recovery weeks. So, I’m basically ending the block on a saturday (sometimes a Sunday) and riding easy until the next Saturday. Saturdays are seldom less than 300tss unless it’s the weekend prior to an A race. So, a recovery week is just taking the 2 long & hard tues/thursday rides and turning them into short/easy Z2 rides. Nothing else really changes, but those 2 days are always my structured work that require serious focus (so it’s nice to have a break from them).
Personally I do most rides at recovery effort and keep one real easy “intensity day.” Something to keep the legs going like 30-30s (i.e. sleeping beauty -4) or a short tempo.
This thread is timely because some buddies who coach distance runners in high school and college had a chat going a week or so on this exact topic. They have defined seasons, races and are peaking for one specific race… not to mention are coaching athletes who are 23 and younger and are competing at a high level… so youth and genetics are likely at play here. And of course it’s not cycling, so there’s that.
Here’s what they said:
Coach 1:
“I’m experimenting 3:1 this year. We cut volume about 10-15% and keep up intensity. We do doubles 3x per week & during the recovery week we drop a morning run and shorten their regular training runs. We keep intensity up. I have found it is just takes too long to build back to where we were.”
Coach 2:
“We run 7 days a week with morning doubles. We drop all morning runs & take a day off that week. We keep up intensity but do a shorter, less intense workout. 4 weeks on, one week off.”
Coach 3:
“We look at the schedule & plan backwards from the goal race. There’s usually 1-2 mid-season races we gear up for. We don’t have a structured formula for recovery weeks but build them around the race schedule. During a recovery week which is after a key race, we drop the next interval workout and do a recovery run or take the day off then we are back at it. Track season is only 10-12 weeks so if we took regular recovery weeks we wouldn’t get the training we need to be in peak shape when we need it.
I thought it was interesting to see the similarities and differences across different endurance sports. I’ll have to ask the swimming coach next!
I aim to cycle 5-6 days/wk, around 10 hours. Normal blocks have 2 intensity sessions per week, one long session, then the rest are 1-1.5 hr rides around 55-65% FTP.
My easy weeks are around the same amount of hours, but no intensity. Doing a couple hrs less than normal would be reasonable, but since I’m not doing huge 30+ hr weeks, I don’t mind keep the time on the bike similar.
Typical week is Monday off, z2 on T, W, Th (may take W or Th off, depending on how I feel), and intensity F & Sa, and usually a group mtb ride Sun (that has plenty of intensity).
Rest week is typically easy spin on Mon, then Tu & W off, z2 for 1-1.5 hrs on Th, and back on the gas for F, Sa, & Su (but I reserve the right to back off or take a day off on the weekend, as needed).
Been doing it this way for a couple years, 8-11 hrs /wk last year. Going to try to train myself to stay in z2 this year, which is getting easier (more enjoyably) since my ftp has increased quite a bit.
So I usually ride about 13-15 hours/week with 2 intense bike days and one strength training workout. Probably like 700TSS average.
With my current coach, for the past 2ish years I’ve moved from a full recovery week to a 5 day recovery week and I think it’s been working really well. So it might look something like:
Mon: Off (maybe easy 3/10 lift)
Tue: Off or recovery
Wed: Recovery (1 hour max. TSS < 10)
Thu: Recovery
Fri: Maybe Recovery or Low Endurance (2-3 hr)
Sat: Long ride with intervals (depends on the block focus and fitness but maybe 5 hours with 4x15FTP throughout for example)
Sun: Long endurance ride (4-5 hours)
I really have liked this set up because before with a full 7 day recovery week it would be a big big lull in volume since it would basically be 2 full weeks between rides over 2-3 hours. This way I still get that good bit of volume every weekend.
So I’ll still sometimes ride 12-14 hours on a recovery week but I’ve dropped a hard interval day and have 4-5 straight days of easy or no riding to really shed the fatigue.
