How quickly do you lose fitness?

milese

In the last couple of months I've been as fit and as quick on the bike as I've ever been (which isn't that impressive, but relative to me), but after a week on holiday, in which I did get in 2 hours of intervals on an exercise bike, I came back to get a cold.

Nothing too bad, didn't keep me off work but just stopped me riding to work for a couple of days. For the next week I only rode the 7 miles to work gently with no longer rides.

Now I feel fine and have felt fine for a few days, but on the bike I feel weak. I rode the 60 mile club run ok on Sat, but seem to have lost a lot of power.

Am I still recovering from the cold and it will come back or is it gone forever, needing to be 'earnt' again?

danowat

I'd say your loss of power is more related to your recent illness than a week off the bike, in my experiance, a week off (without illness or injury obviously) generally means I come back stronger than before.

The timescale for when you start lossing performance is around 2 weeks I think, after 2 weeks off training then your performance will start to take a dive.

Rapha

You'll get your power back to normal pretty quick. I always felt like that after taking my off season break

monkeyb0y

Having been riding for many years, having time off can be a huge benefit.

Many professionals will take upto a month off at the end of their seasons.

Also before you started riding you had lots of time off the bike, so even a few months will only slow you down, not stop you riding.

You will be back and fit in no time, unless someone chops your legs off.

mpn

Garz

As monkeyb0y said.

I do agree with you feeling unfit after a short time off, I injured my knee recently keeping me off the bike for the best part of three weeks and am still puffing up the gradients I was flying up not so long ago.

Wont take long to get the fitness back, but as theres no sportives or urgency it can wait.

andy162

We have a Saturday chaingang 'round our way that is sometimes quite a brutal affair. If racing commitments allow there's usually a couple of Team Sky lads, Rapha & a host of handy lads all dishing it out. The last one I did was the first week in September & I got round, riding thru without too much bother.

I did it this Saturday (albeit on my winter hack) & got a proper shock. I went thru about 5/6 times then just sat in for the remainder of the route. I've probably cut down on overall training volume by 20% or so but the intensity has really declined( no races, evening chaingangs finished etc) . My "top end" power/speed was far reduced from say, mid summer. But( a big but..) it doesn't really matter to me now. There's no reason for me to be flying in November & I'm happy to rest up a bit.

So for me, 4/6 weeks of reducing the intensity is enough to render me a "hanger on". Incidentally I had a nasty crash last May. Off the bike for 6 weeks. By late August I felt something like my old self again. So form soon comes back if you work at it.

It's winter, if yr not riding Cross races every weekend I wouldn't worry about easing back.

97th choice

I play football twice a week and ride at least once, I find that a week off makes a bit of a difference and two certainly knocks me back.