Recovery week - help needed

rabk

Doing 3 weeks hard, one week recovery

I find coming of my recovery week, I am pretty stale for a few days.

My recovery week comprises of
Monday off,
Tues, Wed and Thurs (active recovery Zone 1 and 2)
Fri off,
3 hour ride on saturday Active recovery
and Sun 1- 2 hours Active recovery

Should I be doing more intensity? - seems counter intuitive when I am trying to recover from the previous weeks heavy training

What do others do?

Alex_Simmons/RST

Rabk wrote:

Doing 3 weeks hard, one week recovery

I find coming of my recovery week, I am pretty stale for a few days.

My recovery week comprises of
Monday off,
Tues, Wed and Thurs (active recovery Zone 1 and 2)
Fri off,
3 hour ride on saturday Active recovery
and Sun 1- 2 hours Active recovery

Should I be doing more intensity? - seems counter intuitive when I am trying to recover from the previous weeks heavy training

What do others do?

Keep training and only recover when needed. 3 on 1 off makes no sense.

amaferanga

How hard are your 'hard' weeks?

jgsi

and where does the racing fit in?

rabk

Alex_Simmons/RST wrote:

Rabk wrote:

Doing 3 weeks hard, one week recovery

I find coming of my recovery week, I am pretty stale for a few days.

My recovery week comprises of
Monday off,
Tues, Wed and Thurs (active recovery Zone 1 and 2)
Fri off,
3 hour ride on saturday Active recovery
and Sun 1- 2 hours Active recovery

Should I be doing more intensity? - seems counter intuitive when I am trying to recover from the previous weeks heavy training

What do others do?

Keep training and only recover when needed. 3 on 1 off makes no sense.

Thanks Alex, i've more or less now come to this conclusion

Up until this season, I have trained and trained and trained without recovery, then eventually burned out so thought I'd try a recovery week this season

Well...... the good news is I haven't burned out, but, I am stale for 3 or 4 days after revovery week (got a right kicking in a race the last time I came off the recovery week)

@JGSI - During the race season, I have generally had a race on the Sunday after the recovery period (so in the list above substitute race for Active Recovery on Sunday with a light run on saturday with a few 30 -60 sec efforts)

@Amaferanga - Hard weeks are pretty hard - was following Coggan and Allen's training with a powermeter book.

In light of my previous burn outs, I think I do need to slacken off a bit, but clearly I am taking this to far

amaferanga

If you are keeping the arbitrary recovery week I'd suggest you do at least one high intensity ride 2 or 3 days before your Sunday race. After a week of pootling about it's no wonder you're not ready to race.

rabk

Thinking at most to give myself 2 or 3 days recovery instead of the full week(every 3 weeks or so). Gonna try this with (as you suggest) a high intensity interval session to see if that helps.

Zoomer37

Rabk wrote:

Thinking at most to give myself 2 or 3 days recovery instead of the full week(every 3 weeks or so). Gonna try this with (as you suggest) a high intensity interval session to see if that helps.

Whats wrong with good old fashion smashing it in for a few consecutive days then having a rest day?

rabk

Zoomer

I do this, always have at least one day off a week, usually 2 days before a race.

The recovery week is in addition to this

levitronix

All you need is a couple of 5 min threshold sets into your zone 2 work outs, you should never cut out intensity just dont do as much job done!

rabk

Would that be say 2 x a set of 3 x (5 mins) at threshold with perhaps 5 mins recovery between each interval?

jgsi

amaferanga wrote:

If you are keeping the arbitrary recovery week I'd suggest you do at least one high intensity ride 2 or 3 days before your Sunday race. After a week of pootling about it's no wonder you're not ready to race.

I can back this up... it doesnt work, laying off and pootling in lower zones and then racing.. ok it doesnt work for me should I say.