For a couple of weeks now, I have not taken an official rest week typical of periodic training plans. It certainly makes sense that after a period of build weeks you should plan some recovery. However, I’ve found that it is impossible or at least difficult to plan weeks ahead of time your rest and builds. The overall structure of your season can certainly be estimated and planned, but how your body and your life come together during training greatly determines the specifics of that plan. Most coaches following the periodic build approach recommend 3-4 weeks of build and one week of recovery. Typically this is about half the overall training stress of your biggest week in your build cycle. In a perfect world, I’m guessing this approach works very well. The problem with this is that it makes significant assumptions about how well the training has gone and how much fatigue your body has actually built up. This is where having a way to measure training load and fatigue directly is key in determining a need for recovery time.
It’s often said that you only recover when you rest. This is true, however balancing that with a loss of fitness or potential for better adaption through training is the end goal. Personally, I feel like I can never find that balance. On one end I’m either undertraining or not allowing myself to have enough quality workouts due to too much intensity close together. My hard workouts suffer and become junk miles for the sake of miles, which don’t do anything for my fitness but still keep me fatigued. Nothing new here, this is probably the most discussed topic in amateur cycling.
I mentioned having a way to measure fatigue and training load is essential to managing this balance. Some people can do it by feel and a workout points system with much success. I would say that a lot of the strongest riders I know manage to do this really well, by assigning points to workouts by difficulty, listening to their body, and modifying their plan accordingly. Again, this does not work for me and I just can’t achieve that balance. This is where training with power comes to the rescue. I’ve been using it for a few years but this season I’m using it to its potential and I’m finding a big difference in my growth and fitness. Instead of going into training with power, I’m just going to tie it back into the discussion around finding the appropriate time to recover.
After taking the entire base season more or less off the bike except for maybe 2-3 hours a week, I came back to training with a vengeance. After 5-6 weeks of upping my training load, I was beginning to feel like I could keep going forever! I was able to hit all of my intervals and workouts and made every training goal. I knew I needed to recover eventually, but I decided to keep going until my power meter told me it’s time to rest. Usually this is done by looking at CTL and ATL and the hours on the bike and sticking to the plan. However, since I was already outside 3 week build cycle I needed something else to use as an indicator.
On Tuesday, that indicator came in the form of a failed interval. On my 6th interval of my 6x5’x’1 FTP workout, I blew up about 3:00 minutes into it. Here is the WKO+ file showing the workout.
The first five intervals were fine, although I did overreach on the first one. The last one was a complete detonation. This is the indicator I was looking for to tell me it's time to rest. The last three weeks when I've done this exact workout (at different power levels do to improved fitness) I've been able to nail it and also feel great afterwards. The cumulative fatigue had built up in my legs and I was barely able to limp home after the workout.
Perhaps I overreached on the first few intervals and this was the cause, or I'm coming down with something, or otherwise fatigued, however it does not matter too much. Over the next two days I could feel how tired my body was overall and it's the first time in a few weeks I felt like moving my legs was just too physically demanding. I also felt that deep ache in the legs associated with training that becomes junk miles if I train on it. So I have taken the time to recover over the last two days and tonight I can feel the legs waking back up and ready for the next intervals and my next build cycle. Instead of forcing a schedule on my training, I'm allowing my body to dictate my build cycles. Sure, it's tough to plan for a peak and A race this way, but that's where I would compromise and do a little bit of both while maintaining peak, quality workouts during the rest of the time.
