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How do you guys balance riding with rest days?

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Road Cycling “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle.” -- Ernest Hemingway

How do you guys balance riding with rest days?

Old 05-22-20, 04:59 AM
  #51  
Clyde1820
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Around my area, officialdom has its knickers in a dense wad, over dictating edicts upon everyone. Including going out for "no good reason." Which with some includes traveling without dire need. (Go figure, but there it is.)

I cycle, row, do individual exercise sessions on my own (not at the gyms, which aren't opened up yet). Nursing some minor muscle injuries, so the simpler, reduced-intensity stuff's okay for now. Not nearly the level of exercise I normally do, but it's alright. Better than many.

I'll be happier once the gyms open up. Easier to get a focused, intense workout there. At least, for me it is.
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Old 05-22-20, 11:40 AM
  #52  
Seattle Forrest
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Originally Posted by bruce19
Bogg Lane is THE picturesque spot according to my cycling club. It's a part of a 31 mile loop my GF and I are doing today. I live in what was called the Kissman house across from the Liberty Hill Plant Farm. Built circa 1760. Back in the day it was also know as the Inn at Chestnut Hill. A couple of my friends live on Gates Farm Rd. FWIW, Lebanon is still beautiful. It has the highest % of it's land in agriculture of any town in CT.
Glad to hear it's mostly how I remember it. I've looked on Google Earth and worried it's getting developed in places, but it's hard to get a sense of scale that way.

If you ever stop and grab a picture with the bike and Boggs as a backdrop, I'd love to see it.

The grass is always greener somewhere else, I moved out here, kept talking about how beautiful and how starkly different it is, and most of my family wound up moving to the PNW too. So now I don't have a reason to go back. Which is a shame. I remember learning to swim at Bigalow Hollow and spending hot days in the river near Willimantic. Going to the Mystic Seaquarium.

Mostly I remember driving across town lines and seeing a sign saying "Coventry" (or whatever) "established 1638." On the West Coast, anything from 100 years ago is an unimaginably long amount of time. And 100 miles is a short distance. (I've driven further than that in the morning to ride my bike and then go home for dinner.)

PS - Nice place, and nice rainbow capture too. Here in the city, luxury is having a garden, you could fix six of my gardens on your front lawn.
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Old 05-22-20, 12:48 PM
  #53  
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I ride six days a week and take Sunday off.

Riding "hard" every day is physically impossible. You end up riding junk miles which make you slow and fat. You exert yourself hard enough to recruit your fast twitch fibers so you're not stressing your slow twitch fibers enough to train them, but not hard enough to force training adaptations in four fast twitch fibers. You ride hard enough to reduce appetite suppressing Peptide YY production, but not hard enough to reduce appetite stimulating ghrelin production leaving you with what runners call "runger."

Olympic endurance athletes have one hard session in five.

When training I ride VO2max Mondays with intervals, Threshold Thursdays with a 1 - 1.5 hour ride at a significant fraction of FTP, and Not Short Saturdays at least twice as far as my weekday mileage. I ride the other weekdays at an endurance pace.

I take an easy week in three because that's required for training adaptations to take place and one in four doesn't work as well with middle age.

Neglecting that you end up over reaching which reduces performance, then over training with more serious health implications.

Your mileage will vary.

Last edited by Drew Eckhardt; 05-23-20 at 10:06 AM.
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Old 05-22-20, 03:08 PM
  #54  
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Originally Posted by Seattle Forrest
Glad to hear it's mostly how I remember it. I've looked on Google Earth and worried it's getting developed in places, but it's hard to get a sense of scale that way.

If you ever stop and grab a picture with the bike and Boggs as a backdrop, I'd love to see it.

The grass is always greener somewhere else, I moved out here, kept talking about how beautiful and how starkly different it is, and most of my family wound up moving to the PNW too. So now I don't have a reason to go back. Which is a shame. I remember learning to swim at Bigalow Hollow and spending hot days in the river near Willimantic. Going to the Mystic Seaquarium.

Mostly I remember driving across town lines and seeing a sign saying "Coventry" (or whatever) "established 1638." On the West Coast, anything from 100 years ago is an unimaginably long amount of time. And 100 miles is a short distance. (I've driven further than that in the morning to ride my bike and then go home for dinner.)

PS - Nice place, and nice rainbow capture too. Here in the city, luxury is having a garden, you could fix six of my gardens on your front lawn.
Will get you a pic of Bogg Lane asap. Last night we had trout from the Willimantic River compliments of my son. The farms in and around Lebanon have created a co-op called The Farmer's Cow and you can buy milk and ice cream locally from them. Our backyard....2 acres. I love this place.
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Old 05-22-20, 05:02 PM
  #55  
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The professional coaches I’ve worked with all advocated plans along the same lines.

you have rest days and rest weeks.

Each week has 2 rest days, one off the bike entirely, and one recovery ride.

Each block is a 4 week cycle, focused on a particular objective. Weeks 1-3 build in intensity and volume. Week 4 is a rest week with a decrease in volume but still some intensity.

Basic point is when it’s time
to go hard you need to go hard, and when it’s time to
go easy you need to go very easy.

Too many riders never go easy, and consequently can’t go as hard as they should when it’s time to go hard.
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Old 05-22-20, 06:33 PM
  #56  
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I just ride...Road bikes sometimes....MTBs others...I am not training for anything so no need to schedule anything, to include rest days. Why would I purposely take days off from doing something so fun?
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Old 05-22-20, 07:18 PM
  #57  
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Originally Posted by bruce19
Will get you a pic of Bogg Lane asap. Last night we had trout from the Willimantic River compliments of my son. The farms in and around Lebanon have created a co-op called The Farmer's Cow and you can buy milk and ice cream locally from them. Our backyard....2 acres. I love this place.
My old family homestead is not far from there:

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Old 05-23-20, 04:17 AM
  #58  
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Originally Posted by channelz28
I've been a bike commuter most of my life, 50-100 miles a week, so I'm not new to biking. Since Covid hit, I started taking up riding for exercise as my other activities got shut down and I don't have much else to do. I find when I ride really hard, which is most of the time, I'm almost too sore to ride again the next day. Sometimes for 2 days even. I'm not trying to get faster particularly, I just feel like if I'm out for exercise, I might as well go as hard as I can. I've been riding about 200 miles a week, but I'm not sure if riding while I'm really sore is doing more harm than good. I've tried to take it easy on some days, but it's almost impossible. I also get bored.
there should be hard days with big intervals for developing power
the day after that you should be on recovery mode for just spinning the legs since you are building muscle the next day from the muscle tissue damage you have done the day before
if you train hard 2 days in a row your surcompensation will be at the 4th or 5th day.
if you train too hard everyday you will never improve and fall in overtraining and start having high heart rate as soon as you go out and start pedaling

you should incorporate long endurance rides too for basic endurance.
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Old 05-23-20, 05:40 AM
  #59  
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Originally Posted by Bah Humbug
My old family homestead is not far from there:

Nice
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Old 05-23-20, 09:59 PM
  #60  
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In my early 60s I had to start giving myself more rest days and sleeping more. It's difficult to gauge by how I feel subjectively, so I usually ride four times a week, resting a day in between. Maybe once a month I'll do five rides in a week, but I haven't ridden every day for a couple of years. I was getting stale, not stronger. I know some folks my age who can ride every day, often going full steam every ride. I can't.

For several months I've been using an HRV app to help choose which days to rest, ride and whether to make it a hard workout or longer easier ride. Seems to work for me. Due to various health issues some days I can barely get out of bed and the HRV Elite app is good at spotting those days and suggesting a complete rest day or very light workout -- like a walk or moderate stretching, yoga, calisthenics, etc.

I aim for one hard workout ride a week, a couple of easier effort rides, and one mix with some short intervals/sprints along with an easy zone 1-2 warmup/cooldown.

I don't schedule those. I just go by how I feel once I'm on the road. If my heart rate indicates tempo effort when I'm at an effort that would usually be only zone 1 or 2, I don't try to fight my body. I just take it easy and head home if I start feeling worse.

On good days I'll head out for a zone 2 ride, discover after a 30-60 minute warmup I'm feeling strong, so I'll increase the effort and distance, or do some interval work on short, steep hills, or flat sprint zones that are about 60 seconds long (for me -- 45 seconds for someone younger and stronger).
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Old 05-30-20, 09:36 AM
  #61  
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I can't train at the intensity I used to in my 20's and 30's since I need more recovery time at 50+ so my routine is basically this:

3 days road bike, 2 days MTB.
1x full gas day, 1x hard, 1x medium, 2x active recovery, 2x rest days. The rides are a mix of HIIT (intervals) days circa 50km, endurance days circa 100-150km and 50-80 odd km for the rest.
If I'm racing MTB on the Sunday, most of the week is MTB leading up to it, no hard days after Tuesday, few sprints on the Saturday on a shorter ride, focus on technical aspects for a couple of days.
If I'm racing road, the same applies as above but on the road obvs.

I use Strava segments as motivation for intervals etc. I don't follow a strict regimen so my rest and recovery ride days vary, it's just how I feel on the day mainly. Some weeks I'll ride 6x instead of 5 but the extra ride will be easy. I listen to what my body is telling me, any sign of fatigue etc and I rest.
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