Originally Posted by
spinconn
Great comments guys, and informative, but they deal with why you do not want to ride without taking days off. But how about needing to (other than for weather, sickness, etc). From a strictly physical standpoint do you not need a day a week to recover your muscles or is that not an issue going slowly in lower gears?
When I was a young man I could and did ride weeks on end, doing a hundred miler every day. I could not help but just hammer all day, self contained, camp out, and do it again the next day. But I had been riding almost daily for years and everything, body-wise, was in tip top shape.
Nowadays, not so much. Things like work, surgical procedures, family obligations, advanced age all conspire (or have conspired) against my time on a bicycle. Consequently, I'm not in the shape I'd like to be. I feel like rest days are somewhat mandatory for me now. But for me a rest day just means taking it easy, like light hiking, perhaps doing a few easy miles in the afternoon or maybe just napping all day long and not going hammering on my bicycle like a madman. Cycling is physical and one needs to listen to their body.
tl;dr One size does not fit all, all the time