Recovery?

I will complete recovery rides one or two times per week to help recover from more intense training rides. However, I began to wonder if a "recovery" ride is a Z1 ride exclusively (being careful to not venture into the upper zones) or if a "recovery" ride was any ride that is below your current CTL.

As always, thank you for your insights.

Geebs

Active rest rides should be short and performed at very low intensity, but some folks also have 'recovery rides' in their weekly schedules which are moderate from an intensity standpoint and fairly easy from an overall workload or TSS standpoint.

So some of it's semantics and figuring out what works into your overall training plan but there's definitely room for one or more days of what I think of as 'soft SST' or others term 'recovery rides' that differ from traditional total or active rest days. My soft SST days both yield a TSS about half of my current CTL and are performed at mid SST to Tempo intensity.

-Dave

In my world, aka planet Dancen - this is how I do recovery rides........

Spandex? Fughetaboutit! Give me baggy shorts, easy easy pedalling ( if < .5), cruising the neighborhood, smelling the flowers and chillin' while being out on my bike without hurting/sweating.

Helps my legs not feel so heavy after a hard training block. Plus it sure helps the brain too, just crusin with friends.

Z2-Z4 do almost the same effect but you have to ride hella longer on the z2 end to get the same effect as shorter z4. Good luck with 15 hours of z2 if you have a job and a life!!!

Thank you for the advice. I have recently started building (attempting to build) FTP by dutifully completing my 2x20's at 95%FTP and 2x30's at 90%FTP. Maybe it's because I haven't done this much Z4 work this early or maybe it was because my recovery rides were too hard, but I was just not recovering very quickly. Tuesday is 2x20's, Wed is an hour Z2-3, and Thursday is 2x30's. Despite a Friday Z2-3 (1:30), Saturdays just really hurt!!! Saturday is just a 2.5-3.5hr Z2-3 ride too, not something that should really be all that difficult.

I think I'm eating enough carbs, and I am pretty sure my recovery rides are easy enough (generally about 1/2 the TSS of a typical 2x20day). I'm thinking that I will just have to man-up and soon enough these weeks wont seem so bad.

Thank you for the advice!

It might be your CTL isn't quite high enough for that schedule.

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Alex is probably right about CTL in your case. However, in my opinion (and I know others will differ on this) you should just be taking Friday off anyway. You have two good workouts in there and two not so good ones. Why wreck your Saturday ride for a not great workout? Take a day off and then up your Saturday intensity a bit. (Take a day off means either no riding or something really really light like 30 mins zone 1.)

Yes this a really good point it is up each person to decide weather or not to train on any given day, there is no reason to ride 5,6 or 7 days a week BUT most people love riding it is addictive and has other benifits like weight loss/maintainance.
It can be easyier for some to just ride rather than cut calories or train with a little less intensity but more hours, what will matter is if the person is getting the results from their efforts that they desire.
For me my results come from riding less days but WAY more intensity and my aerobic power has increased by ~ 20% in the least 11mths heres how.
I stopped riding so much and trained 3-4 days p/wk sometimes 5 but not often, l would always be fresh and motivated from being off the the bike for 1-2 days so 80-120min of L4/SST p/day in the 87-96% of FTP in blocks of 10-20-30-60min what ever works for ya with however much time between sets you need to refuel stretch, fart, piddle it does't matter, generally the longer blocks are done at the start easing into the upper end of the zone your targetting and just play along with how yer feel.
when you've had enough eat, drink, fart what ever and do some tempo miles in your farvourite little area (for me its lots of hiils/rollers with some playing around in the drops and out of sadlle riding) this will add to your CTL then l'd take 2 days off YUP 2 days off then l would be chopping at the bit to get back out and smash it again for some QUALITY work FULLY recovered and motivated to suffer.... but I love training with my tounge hanging out it may look like i'm suffering on the outside but honest l'm smiling on the inside.
l would rack up an avg of 200-250min p/wk of mostly L4 and do this for 3-4mth blocks so l am proof you do not need to train for the sake of training BUT like i said some ride most days for other reasons or because they like it but l have the time to train when ever and however long l want and l am just lucky that l have found my sweetspot in terms of effective training. Sleep, work and other time constraints will be a big influence on peoples scheduals but if anyone can take anything from my post it is that you can sacrafic atleast one day in favour of more quality work with still the same TSS at the end of the week as you would have had.

^^^Good to hear from another "train hard, rest hard" advocate...

I'm on the L4/L1 bandwagon as well...

I've handled recovery rides in two ways. Given some perspective on TSS vs CTL toll, I carry a 100+ CTL almost year round.

1 - I had a really flat course and I could spin 4-5 laps of the course in 90 minutes and spin at the very edge of recovery zone (~45-47% FTP) and never break a sweat. This worked awesome. (~40-50 TSS)

2 - I no longer have that course available, but I have a 80 minute commute on rolling roads. I don't focus so much on what zone I'm in, but I don't focus really at all. If I'm on flat roads, I just spin easy. Up hills I drop it to the lowest gear and spin. Today's "recovery" ride averaged ~55% FTP, will probably end up normalized around ~65% FTP (~55-60 TSS) It also depends on timing the ride. I spun in this morning @ 6-7:30am. I won't be on the bike again until tomorrow afternoon ~3pm.

A recovery ride is NOT any ride below your CTL. I can go out and do a 1 hr SST/MIET session with 10 min warm up, 10 min cool down, and be below my CTL. It will NOT be recovery.

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