My current training plan has 3 weeks of training, building up each week, and 1 recovery week for each 4 week cycle. This seems fine to me, but I am beginning to think that my recovery weeks might not be easy enough for me to fully recover.
My workouts next weeks include 2.5hours of swimming, 8 hours on the bike, and 3.75 hours running. The following week is a recovery week. I have 2.5 hours of swimming, 6 hours on the bike, and 3 hours of running scheduled for the recovery week all at a pretty easy pace (zone 1 or 2). Is easy enough to be a recovery week, or should I be cutting back even more?
Cut the volume by 65-75% but mantain intensity. You should feel recovered at the end of the recovery week, not at the begining. And distribute your training more at the begining of the week and less and less at the end. At the end of the week you should be doing more intensity and less volume.
Only you can answer that question. It is not necessarily the time your spending working out but the intensity. You need to decrease the intensity ( pace, speed ) of your workouts during recovery. This is important both for physical and psychological reasons. If your pushing yourself hard during the 3 weeks you need both a physical and mental break. If after 3 weeks of the " hard cycle" you feel neither physically nor mentally exhausted you may need to reevaluate the effort your putting in to your training. On the other hand if your running out of gas before 3 weeks is up you may need to throttle back so you can build up in intensity so that your 3rd week is the hardest then take whatever rest you may need during the 4th week. Norm
I’m still working this one out myself. A lot of folks say that you can keep up the volume, but I find that if I cut way back on volume(around 50%) I get to the point where nothing is sore, and when the next week comes, I am ready to go.
When I do maintain volume during recovery weeks, but cut intensity, I find that I am more or less flat. Never fast, sometimes slow, but not really progressing. This season I am trying to follow the TTB plan more closely, do the structured workouts, and rest when necessary. I want to do more than build my base, I want to get faster. Sometimes this means resting.
And as another poster mentioned, the mental break from the routine is nice.
For me, that is way too much during a recovery period. Keep in mind that the 3 hard weeks tear your muscles up and the gains we all seek come when the muscles rebuild and become stronger. This happens during a recovery week. I personally cut back 50% during an easy week, including at least 2 days off, and I don’t feel bad if it is 3 days off.
This is the time to skip the 5 am swim and stay in bed until 7:00, or to stay up past 9:30 and watch a DVD with the Mrs. Recovery weeks are critical and I think they should be taken so easy that by the last day of the easy week you’re ready to go tear your legs off on the bike. Lance had a great line about most AG athletes “going too easy on their hard days and too hard on their easy days.” Don’t listen to me…listen to him!
In my training i rarely take a day off except during recovery weeks than i might take two. reduce volume but maintain some intensity to allow your body to recover, which happens to also be the way to taper. how much to trim depends upon your fitness, your events etc. if your doing an IM and are several months out (5-8) you might only reduce volume by 10-25%. If you close maybe by 30-40%.
play around with different reductions, if you come back feeling supercharged and raring to go there is your answer
