Originally Posted by
Iride01
Recover? Are you sore or tired? I'm usually ready to ride again if someone ask to go.
I drink plenty of fluid while cycling and seldom loose even a pound maybe two after a 4 hour ride in the heat. I also drink not quite a liter of recovery mix after every ride. I'm finding that chocolate milk works very well. I'm using chocolate soy milk.
Other than that, what's to recover after a ride? I mow the grass, walk 3 to 5 miles with my wife and pretty much anything else.
Or are you just asking what we do to relax?
If you are not trying to improve your fitness and riding well within your limits then you don't need much recovery time. But if you are building your fitness (say for a target event a few months down the line) and your training rides are really pushing your limits, then adequate recovery time becomes critical. You follow a basic cycle of controlled overload during training and adaptation occurs during recovery. Without the recovery time you just burn yourself out if you are doing hard rides continually and there comes a point when you can't even ride hard anymore because of all the accumulated fatigue. Or if you only do easy rides every day then you don't need any recovery, but you don't get any faster as there is no stimulus to drive adaptation (which is fine if you are not trying to get faster).