My ‘A Race’ was a criterium, and as I was the protected rider, I spent 80% of the race cruising at the back, 15% moving into position, and then about 3 minutes of all-out work in the last 2 laps to contest the sprint. It was awesome, my team worked brilliantly, and I am WAAAY less fatigued than I am after a hard workout.
Plan Builder blocked in a recovery week, but since I tapered for 2 weeks coming into this race, I’m fresh as a daisy.
Any issues with skipping the recovery week and going straight back into build?
You’re not recovering from the race as much as the weeks/months of work building up to your A race.
A 100 meter sprinter still takes time off after the Olympics even though their race was only 10 seconds. Congrats on the race and taper. My suggestion is to enjoy a week of downtime and celebrate the success of the season.
Imho, 3 weeks of chill for one sprint is excessive. But consider doing all the fun riding (group rides?) you’ve been missing out on instead of jumping back into structure.
The adage of “listen to your body” doesn’t only apply to when you are feeling worn out……based on what you posted I think you can skip the recovery week if you feel fresh and sharp.
Agree with the other posters. The recovery week is more related to your prior training.
Certainly I’ve had races that ended up much lower effort than planned. There’s nothing “wrong” with skipping the rest week, but just take into consideration your next goal and how the rest week fits best into the next iteration of your plan.
If you have another race, and your next rest week is in the right place, can you cope with an extra work week between rest weeks? If you have no more races, just go full send on whatever you like.
Taper/recovery needs are pretty individual IMO, and I’d also consider them in the context of how deep you went/how you felt during the race and how they fit in your overall season. I also suspect having an entire week is as much a mental break as anything for a lot of people, so if you’re feeling fresh I’d probably go for it- maybe a couple of easier days and then test the waters.
Only thing I’d keep in mind heading straight into another build is that you’ll accumulate fatigue over the course of that, so think in terms of the entire block rather than just the immediate term. (I’ve been known to come off a post-race high feeling super motivated and then go out too hard and tank after a week, so, uh, know thyself )
I’m going to echo what I’m already hearing in this thread.
Although your A race wasn’t long in duration, it was a pretty high-intensity effort. Also, your schedule leading up to this event was four weeks long (including the two-week taper), which, in its own right, deserves some recovery. I also see that you had a C race less than a week before your A race, which was longer and more intense than the A race, so we should consider that as well.
It looks like you have quite a few more events over the next few weeks starting as early as next weekend. For this reason, you’ll be heading back into a Specialty phase after this recovery week, so I’d say that the recovery week is really critical right now. These phases are tough, and even if you aren’t feeling fatigued, you likely will in the next few weeks. It’s good to feel really motivated to train, but there isn’t a better time for a recovery week than right now.
I’d say take the recovery week so that you can tackle your upcoming Specialty phase and future events with some freshness and confidence.
This is the approach I ended up taking. I skipped all of my scheduled ‘reco week’ workouts and rode outside however I felt like. I did a bunch of group rides, and an all-out effort up our local climb (shoutout to the @RadelaideSummitPodcast talking Nortons!). Did about 400 TSS of just enjoying riding my bike.
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