Originally Posted by swampy1970 .
Quote: Originally Posted by CalicoCat .
Ok, maybe "totally recovered" was a slight overstatement. However, I really don't advocate going into an intensity session with dead legs, you want to be feeling good enough to put out a solid effort. That is what I meant. If your legs are still VERY sore a couple days after a workout you (and by you, I am speaking generally) are probably doing something wrong - either too much too soon, or poor nutrition/poor recovery habits.
I used to have that belief...
... then my coach told me to get my finger out and do some harder work on consecutive days when required.
If you do it for months on end you'll end up dead on the bike but if you work harder you just need to rest harder. Unless you're pounding out big 5+ hour days you don't need to change up the diet too much either. If you do anything harder for the first time you'll end up feeling like crud and unless you really are reaching the limits of human endurance then chances are the "discomfort" you're feeling will be somewhat temporary and something that a good nights kip and a bit of feet up infront of the tele won't help aleviate for the most part.
At the end of the day it all boils down to what you want to do and how well you want to do it. If you subscribe whole heartedly to the notion of never doing consecutive days of very hard training then good luck with the 2 or 3 day mini-stage races. If those events are not part of your calendar then a diet of "death on the bike" with added chili probably isn't on your menu.
I do understand what you are saying. I have not entered multi-day stage races, but do have one tentatively on the calender for the 2011 season, so I should probably give some extra thought to what you are saying. Unfortunately, I am peaking for an event a month before, so I don't know what kind of shape I'll be in for the stage race. Since it's my first stage race, and not a target race, I just want to see what it is like, and see how I do.
Although I didn't have any stage races on the 2010 calender, I did have a couple weekends of more than one race, including back to back road races on sat/sun. I did feel pretty beat up by the end of the 2nd race, but we had a team win that day, and I finished 5th, so still a pretty good showing, but I probably could have done better had I not raced the day before (I was useless in trying to make a break happen). That being said, it isn't like I don't train on consecutive days at all. Year round, saturdays are interval days (or races) for me, and sundays are long rides (3+hrs in the winter, and 5+hrs in-season). However, on sundays, I am asking my body to go long, not to put out hard efforts, so if my legs are sore from the day before, it is not really a problem, and monday is active recovery, so I still try to be rested before my next round of hard work (Tues/thurs are hard workouts, and where I get in my best structured training, because in-season, these days are never disrupted by weekend races).
Given that I have a stage race on the calender, and probably some weekends with multiple races (keeping in mind that these aren't going to be target races exactly) I would be curious to hear how you would go about training.
