I’ve been wearing my WHOOP for a little over a year and a half now and according to it the thing that consistently take me the longest to recover from has been vacations. This is with a high fairly high training volume, stressful (workload/time commitment) at times job and a 50 year old body. Surprised the heck out of me.
Man I feel you. Regular travel is part of my life (work/conferences/social). I managed well to let the weeks coincide with rest weeks. I still wished I would have been on the bike at least for 3 times endurance, every time.
I’ve come to terms with the situation, it’s just what life brings at this moment. not traveling means better training - but the cost of that in my life is high. I bought a travel bag Now but have only used it once so far.
This winter I had a huge fiasco with overseas travel right into fullblown influenza. Just recovered, I picked up a knee injury. right after That I got sick again for 2 weeks with high fever etc. end of story 8 weeks with very little training and a 10% FTP drop. Really bad luck!
That’ll do it. I’ve liked Sleeping Beauty as well (five sets of 5x30/30s at 115%) for the same purpose. Blow out the cobwebs.
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I’ve just recently returned from a 3 week vacation in New Zealand. Prior to leaving I took a ramp test. My idea was to also take one on return and measure any FTP decrease but I never found enough time to get the 2nd ramp test done. Instead I’ve just eased myself back into training whilst recovering from the jetlag. I’ve been back for 2 weeks now and completed 5 workouts and 1 race. Not had to bail on any of the workouts so I guess I didn’t experience any significant drop in FTP.
I think in the future I’m just going to use vacation time as my off-season. I have 35 days of vacation each year, and I think I’m inclined to just train all year round.
I’ve found it hard to keep the plan on track with holidays and trips with the wife even on a mid volume plan. Being away for a week I think I’d try to coincide that time away with a recovery week. You can usually find a way to crowbar that in with enough planning - e.g. add an extra week here or there or compress a week down to fit. That’s probably not possible with high volume, but have just done it on mid volume build. I couldn’t do the long SST last Sunday and got back Wednesday late afternoon. So I added an extra 2 hours of Z2 to more or less make up the TSS the week prior. On my return I did O/Us Wednesday evening (felt terrible), anaerobic Thursday and doing Z2 Friday. That got me back on track for Saturday’s intensity with the preceding day being quite restful.
If possible look for a gym bike to do some Z2 while you’re away, even if it’s not linked to your phone/tablet you can easily do a Pettit or Taku by feel.
If you do Zero exercise on vacation it’s takes 10days to get back “on it”
Personally I always load up the TTS before any vacation, recently I did a 5 week block of build before a vacation.
I also run (Zone 1) daily on vacation and do a few gentle bodyweight exercises (lunges, etc)
Kind of works for me.
How long was the vacation?
Appreciate all the remarks so far, we’ve got a good support group! I forgot to mention prior to the trip I was at CTL 81 and TSB of -9 and when I came back I was down to 68 CTL and 35 TSB. I had finished SSB2 HV and had done a week of vo2/endurance prior to the trip with the goal of jumping into sustained power build (HV) upon coming back.
Normally I would seek out a gym bike but the hotel didn’t have one and I don’t have running shoes. Figured I’d give the whole just take a break thing a try. We’ll see how riding today feels, still not very optimistic but I might do something like bluebell and see if that kicks my butt into gear
I’m a little skeptical that there’s that much actual fitness loss in such a short time. I’m aware that higher intensity fitness goes away quickly, (also comes back quickly) but aerobic endurance endurance should hang in without too much slipping for past two weeks.
I think there’s some perspective that needs to be gained from planned and unplanned breaks. Chad has a story of a high level rider who would plan a full week off the bike and come back faster. Of course that was planned after a big block of hard training so it makes sense. Still all of us are going to experience extended time off the bike, there’s times when we should push through a challenging time, or illness and times when it’s the best option to just step away. There’s plenty of stories of people who take forced breaks and come back stronger, either from the rest, or the mental break they didn’t realize they need.
I’m as guilty of exercise addiction, I mean it’s why we’re all here, but you gotta have more in life than just training in your bike. When it’s gone, what’s left?
Mini follow-up: On the third day of hobbling around with hip pain, I did a strength workout. Nothing severe, but it did include some high step-ups (onto a flat bench) while holding a pair of 20 lb. dumbbells.
This had a high chance of being a stupid idea. But my hip pain cleared almost immediately after, and has not returned in the three days since.
Probably still a stupid decision, but sometimes you get lucky I suppose.
Vacation was 8 days but off the bike 10 in total.
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I “think” that after 7 days blood plasma volume drops meaning aerobic capacity drops, hence the first run / cycle back has a much higher HR. After 2-3 sessions it increases to pre break levels.
I might be quoting Bro-science though… 
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So I tried doing a ramp test on zwift today. Ended up with 272. I finished a full min at 360w and while I didn’t have my HR I felt like I was getting to my limit (looking after the fact my HR got to 184 at the end which is near the top end), I probably could have gone a little longer at 380w but probably not a ton. So maybe I could have tested 280? I had been doing SSB2 HV at 295. I suppose I’ll go forward with 280 and see how things go. Quite a hit to the fragile ego but I’m definitely in need of some re-calibration at the moment to get my mojo back.
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If we drive the bike comes. If we fly I rent one. She gets to sleep in. I get to ride. (although last years 8 hour ride was only possible because we were staying with friends)