Rest and recovery have become synonymous, but they are different. I would define active recovery as doing about 25% less, at about 25% less intensity--but I sense your plan seems to be go hard always, that might not work for you. Rest, is rest: do nothing, eat well, sleep well. I tend to rest for a day or two when I need it, or work interferes, and don't do nearly enough active recovery.I am plagiarizing and paraphrasing from an old website that I borrowed a while ago for an email to a friend, and apologize in advance for the fact that I have long since lost the source.
It also doesn't sound like you are doing a true periodization plan, which would involve macrocycles, mesocycles, and microcycles. Basically, this involves building a macrocycle upon when you want to peak; and then splitting that macro cycle up into mesocycles where you start to ladder up, and each mesocycle involves a series of microcycles.The macrocycle is the longest of the three cycles and includes all four stages of a periodized training program (e.g., endurance, intensity, competition and recovery). Because macrocycles incorporate all 52 weeks of your annual plan, they provide you with a bird's-eye view of your training regimen and allow you to facilitate long-range planning.
Instead, it sounds like you've just been going hard for the past 6-8 weeks until your body finally said, "No mas." In the umbrella of periodization, Mesocycles are typically three or four weeks in length. Two very common mesocycles consist of 21 and 28-day training blocks. For example, a 25-year old experienced competitor might use a 23/5 training pattern (i.e., a 28-day mesocycle). This consists of 23 days of relatively hard work followed by 5 days of recovery and easy spinning. Conversely, an older or less-experienced cyclist may opt for a 16/5 training pattern (i.e., a 21-day mesocycle) that includes 16 days of hard training followed by 5 days of recovery. 6-8 weeks would be almost two mesocycles, and you would have microcycles within that cycle that would incorporate recovery and rest, which would be do nothing, and active recovery days, which would be do activities well below your stress levels to permit recovery.
A microcycle is the shortest training cycle, typically lasting a week with the goal of facilitating a focused block of training. An example of this is an endurance block where a cyclist strings three or four long rides together within one week to progressively overload training volume.
Another example incorporates block training, which consists of very hard workouts for two or three consecutive days followed by an equal amount of recovery (days off or very easy rides). This would constitute an intensity microcycle where the goal is to improve key physiological abilities such as lactate threshold (the highest intensity a fit cyclist can maintain for 60 minutes) and aerobic capacity (the maximum amount of oxygen the body can consume during high intensity exercise). Generally speaking, three or four microcycles are tied together to form a mesocycle.
Many of us don't follow a formal periodization schedule and simply train hard whenever we can, and work, life, rest, etc imposes sufficient forced rest that it still works out OK. Its not optimum, but you can progress. Traditionally, winter tended to be a period of recovery, and as winter broke, group rides, races, and more opportunity to train outdoors created a natural mesocycle into the late spring for early summer events; then the dog days forced more rest into late July and August, and the fall starts another few mesocycles where you are peaking as the race season approaches. if you were a cyclocross rider, you focused on peaking in the fall; if you were a criterium racer, you focused on peaking in late June.
Nowadays, folks train year round with a lot of quality training occurring indoors over the winter, which is why periodization has become more standard for serious athletes.
