Recovery on Demand

Our coach (in past years) and mentor Joe Friel, has a huge effect on the manner in which our two person team trains.  He has recently put a name on a process…..RECOVERY ON DEMAND.  We are currently adapting this concept to our training.  To get better in 2014,  I planned for us to achieve higher training loads.   I suspected that we would could get stronger if we increased the loads.

As most of you know Training load = intensity x volume.   As when we were under Joe's tutelage, we planned to emphasize volume in first part of the season and intensity as racing neared.  In the past, we had accomplished what Joe called BREAKTHROUGH WORKOUTS (BT Workouts), about 2 to 3 times per week.   The rest of the time was recovery or active recovery.

I am not sold on active recovery for Christina.   These 1-1.5 hour workouts are questionable in training value and cause her mental stress by interrupting her day.   While they fit me mentally, I am not sure they are really effective in hastening recovery.   So, we take days completely off in lieu of active recovery…….any time we want with no feeling of guilt.

IT IS THE BT Workouts that drive our training gain…….the rest is recovery, on or off the bike.

So, what does Recovery on Demand mean to us??   It means we can schedule training days that are hard, back to back, and then take off when we feel fatigued.   That is how I interpreted it for us.  We can go several weeks hard and back down a week only when necessary, not when scheduled.

We had a short BASE period this year: January.   We can do this because we came into January very aerobically fit.   In the fall months, although we did not schedule to train, we rode huge miles.   In BASE,  I scheduled 3 day blocks of BT Workouts but we would take off if necessary.   All was good and I averaged 4+ BT Workouts per week.   Christina was close behind.  These were mostly 100K endurance rides with some Lactic Threshold intervals dispersed in the workouts.   The intervals ranged from 6 minutes to 50 minutes (Mt Lemmon climbs).   Joe believes these Cruise Intervals or steady state intervals are the best thing for maintaining and increasing one's Functional Power Threshold.   The problem is most people will not do them because they are very hard.

In February, we moved into more intense training and have had a couple of training races.   Races are the best training.   The goal for this period is to get in 4 BT workouts a week:

Anaerobic Hill Intervals - DOGS on Tuesday - the best training ride I have ever done…..ever.
20 minute steady state intervals (Cruise intervals) - Substitute an ITT Race.
Hard group ride - Sub a road race
20-60 minute climbing intervals - Mt Lemmon

NOTE:  Once every two weeks, we will do an endurance ride.  We will revisit our endurance needs with a 3-4 workout block of endurance rides if needed.

Feb 2 - Following an 'easy' week, we had Oracle RR and the day after we were both in the bag!   I felt almost like I had the flu……fatigue.  We laid around all day on Monday but fully rode the DOGS Anaerobic Hill Ride on Tuesday.  We both performed well in the DOGS but Tuesday PM we were exhausted again….both of us.   Wednesday we aborted a BT Workout and took our bikes for walk with Roger for 1.5 hours….I mean all in Z1…..we were passed by fat lady in a Pearl Izumi outfit!   Today, I took Christina to the airport (got up at 4:30 AM) and just still did not have a lot of kick.   I did salvage the day with solid endurance ride (100k - Steady endurance pace) again with Roger.   I feel pretty good right now.

The jury is still out on Recovery on Demand.   I don't think it works if you have a remote coach.   If you are self coached (me) or have a coach who workouts with you (Christina), it may have value.

Here are the tips:

You have to believe you can go hard on back to back days.

You must be prepared to listen to your body and back down as needed.

If you do hard workouts, you need a lot of recovery.

Most folks go too hard on their easy days and too easy on their hard days.

Some really hard efforts are easier to accomplish with a group.

If you ride with great riders, you just might be one?