If your typical training load per week is say 500, and go do an intense ride that is over 500 on one day, how long does it / would it take for you to fully recover? I’m 3 days into recovery and my RHR is way low and I feel cooked in general. I finally had a good night of sleep last night, but I can’t push any real power without my body feeling like I’m in the red zone. Any tips for speeding the recovery time up? My legs honestly don’t feel all that bad just walking around, but overall I have zero energy despite keeping my nutrition quite high.
It depends. 
Recovery is very individual and there are a number of factors that play into it.
That said, if you listen to what a lot of gravel pros are planning / have done after Unbound, most are planning at least a week off the bike following the race.
Listen to your body and don’t push it to get back to training. Use the rest to let your body fully absorb the training load you just stuffed into it.
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Agree with @Power13 that it depends.
Honestly, if I were to do a 500TSS ride (the max I’ve ever done was 371) I wouldn’t be trying to do anything over low Z2 for at least 4 days. I’d have taken 2 days off (with like shuffling speed walks), 2 days of recovery riding (1hr max, < 10TSS), then maybe start back with some Z2.
I haven’t done a single ride that big but I’ve done 3 day blocks of near 900TSS or super dense VO2 blocks and that’s what I do the next week. It would be at least 5 days before I expect to do anything more than endurance.
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The longer the effort the more I’ve discovered the recovery time follows the “it depends”.
Some 400-600km mile brevets I’d be doing a recovery ride, other times I’d be ignoring my bike for days. Rhr and hrv has been good sign posts from my Garmin but ultimately trust how you feel.
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Very individual, some ultra events I’ll have a load of around 500 TSS per day for 7 or so consecutive days. My typical weeks don’t go much above 700-800 TSS, unless I am peaking for my A event. But I train my durability.
My general rule of thumb during training, to take a day off for every 250 TSS I accumulate in a single day. Thus following a day of a 500 TSS session, would lead me to take a couple of days recovery.
You’ll need to work out your own recovery rules of thumb. Then disregard / push them a little, if you decide to improve your durability.
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Go with feel. I did a nearly 600TSS, >8000kJ ride a few years ago, felt weirdly fine the next day. Did ~4.5 hours easy riding over the next 4 days and on the 5th day was convinced to do a road race with friends where I had probably the best race legs I’d had all season (didn’t put them to very good use thanks to bad tactics but that’s another story!) and didn’t seem to have any delayed impact over the next few months. I’ve also had 300TSS rides which have left me feeling flat and lacking motivation for a week. Body and mind can be weird sometimes.
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It depends. It takes me weeks to feel truly over a 24 hr MTB race. Lots of repeated threshold climbs and the stress of racing is a killer. However a long audax is less, road miles are easier to pace than steep mtb technical climbs, and there is no pressure to place so, I’ve always found I can shift the fatigue of those within a week or so. My life outside of biking isn’t simple though, I think if I could literally just focus on recovering it would be quicker.
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Wow, that sounds like an insane event! I think I’ve done only 2-3 1000 tss weeks in my life. 3000+ is nuts. Do you have any issues with sleep or fatigue?
I noticed that the day after I actually felt ok, and was able to do a few hours no problem, and had pretty decent power too. Legs were a little tired but overall I felt really good mentally and physically. It was after the Monday recovery day where I felt horrible. Zero energy.
The total tss was over 4,000 as it was an 8 day event.
I slept pretty well, out in minutes in some cases. As long as I have a good feed and prepared my bike and gear ready for the next leg, before I slept, I recovered pretty well for the same again next day.
As to fatigue, that was an interesting one. During the event, it didn’t really hit me. But once I’d finished, the fatigue had me sleeping a lot. Luckily I was travelling home by public transport. I wouldn’t have been fit to drive for a few days.
I was on the bike four days after I’d finished but just an hour of Z2 to give the legs a spin. I moved to some tempo 11 days after I finished, and threshold a month later, with VO2 a week after that.
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