Recovery Ride ?

Mattsar
Mattsar Posts: 11
edited October 2015 in Road beginners
hey everyone !

So , What is recovery ride ? what to do in it ? and what is the benefit of doing it ?


thanks in advance

Comments

  • g00se
    g00se Posts: 2,221
    Just a gentle leg-turner. No real effort. It's a ride to take the day or two after a really hard effort to stop your legs stiffening up.
  • drummer_boy
    drummer_boy Posts: 236
    [url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19725677#p19725677]g00se[/url] wrote:
    Just a gentle leg-turner. No real effort. It's a ride to take the day or two after a really hard effort to stop your legs stiffening up.

    What g00se said. It helps to gently remove lactic acid from the leg muscles, aiding speedier recovery.
  • Bobbinogs
    Bobbinogs Posts: 4,841
    Ideally, no more than 45 minutes (ish) and no efforts outside of zone 1. It is actually quite hard to do on the road so I usually restrict pure recovery rides to the turbo and watch something nice and trashy on the box at the same time.

    The trick of doing a recovery ride out on the road is to let people pass you without rising to the bait...whilst inwardly refusing to accept that the chopper who just passed you is in any way a better rider than you...

    A good recovery ride helps to stop your legs from stiffening up and things like DOMS.
  • BrandonA
    BrandonA Posts: 553
    Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan state it's a ride of up to one hour at less than 55% of FTP or less than 68% of FTHR.

    I don't tend to do them that often as I do a lot of walking to and from work. I find walking slowly has the same effect.
  • ben@31
    ben@31 Posts: 2,327
    [url=http://www.bikeradar.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19725492#p19725492]Mattsar[/url] wrote:


    So , What is recovery ride ?

    Its what some write on Strava as an excuse for an average mundane ride.

    Others include...

    - Windy ride
    - Social ride
    - A quick ride out before
    - Ride with the missus.
    "The Prince of Wales is now the King of France" - Calton Kirby
  • mfin
    mfin Posts: 6,729
    In recovery zone you can recover in the sense that you can store glycogen back up in your muscles, hence you're actually fuelling them back up whilst you're exercising in that zone. (This is as easy as I can paraphrase it). It's not to do with removing lactic acid.

    It does pay off if done properly and of course loosens muscles back up if they were to the point of stiffening up.
  • redvision
    redvision Posts: 2,958
    mfin wrote:

    It does pay off if done properly and of course loosens muscles back up if they were to the point of stiffening up.

    It does definitely help, but has to be done properly - which is where the difficulty comes in.
    No matter how focused/disciplined i feel, somehow i usually always end up riding slightly too hard on a recovery ride which defeats the purpose.
  • IShaggy
    IShaggy Posts: 301
    If you can convince yourself that a recovery ride is beneficial then do it. But there seems to be very little in the way of scientific evidence that they are.

    I prefer to put my feet up. I have tried recovery rides from time to time over the years but if anything found them detrimental. But then I do not have much discipline and so struggle to ride slowly. I also live in a hilly area. But the main reason I don't like recovery rides is that I also want to recover mentally, and having a day off leaves me feeling mentally fresh and rarering to go.
  • kajjal
    kajjal Posts: 3,380
    Recovery rides are quite difficult to do as the temptation to put the power down and speed up is hard to resist.

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