I’m coming to the end of SSBMVII, with my last session on Xmas Eve. The week after I have already blocked out as we are going skiing.
I’ve now noticed the week I get back is schedule as a recovery week and I don’t get started training again until the 11th of Jan.
Just wondering what you would do in this situation?
Sure, skiing will be quite physical, but do i need to take a full recovery week after it?
I’m also not sure how to adapt the plan if I do decide to replace the recovery week.
3rd to the 9th is the scheduled recovery week, so easy endurance stuff.
10th is my day off.
11th is a ramp test and then into general build mid volume.
I’ve built my plan in plan builder and am using adaptive training.
How do I go about replacing some or all of the recovery week?
Do I use alternatives during the recovery week and AT will update the sessions in the following week(s), or is there some way to delete the recovery week and reset the plan so this is the replaced with the first week of general build?
Yes you certainly can substitute different work outs you choose, but let me share my current near mirror image experience. I just finished SSB1MV including 4 of 5 recovery week workouts - missing the last in travel for a week of skiing. The recovery week work workouts seemed harder on my quads than they should have been and doubt they would have felt were it not for the preceding weeks of training. It was clear recovery was definitely needed for me. Arrived for skiing with some lingering VML tenderness which is what I get AND this is exactly what muscle the skiing is hard on!! When I get home my first wo after 2 days rest will be the ramp test and then a build 1. I really hope my recovery adaptations are able to happen and reading your post I almost wish I had a recovery week to look forward to when I get back from this skiing jag. Experiences may vary and I am 61 and perhaps require more recovery time - but If it were me, I personally would not delete the recovery week until you get back and see how you feel after the skiing stress. I’m in Breckenridge not too much terrain open yet but good snow AND Blizzard ongoing today!
What the right approach is depends on how hard you ski and how much it takes out of you. Personally if I’m skiing with the family and is mostly on piste cruising then I certainly wouldn’t need a recovery week afterwards. But if I was skiing hard with plenty of more technical stuff and some hiking (and possibly some hard apres ski…) then an easy week before getting back into hard training would be welcome.
As to the how - presumably if you just delete your holiday from the calendar then Plan Builder will schedule the recovery week for that week and you can just skip those rides, then next block starts when you get back.
I’m 51, so a little younger but definitely do need a bit more recovery than I used to.
I’ve got some big events in the calendar for 2022, which is why I’m a bit worried about taking my foot of the gas.
I do take your point about seeing how I feel after the holiday, I could just use the Train Now options and come up with a week of my own making depending on how I’m feeling.
Not quite following a structured plan, but probably wouldn’t do me any damage.
Taking three teenage boys, one of which will always want to stay out to the last lift.
I think they do it for fun, to see how tired they can make me.
This year we are staying near a slope with lights that stays open to 9pm, which I’m hoping means i can sit in the hotel bar watching them, rather than having to ski all day!
Thanks for the advice, I hadn’t thought about deleting the week.
I typically change the recovery weeks that TR schedules. Z2/endurance pace is not recovery. I’ve found myself not feeling great afterward because it did not allow any real recovery. What I typically do is cancel all the scheduled workouts and assign “recess” or others that are actually Z1 and allow recovery. After a few days, I start feeling recovered and might then add a workout to wake my legs up again, like 30/30’s on Saturday and a SS on Sunday.
For you I’d just call your ski trip recovery, when you come back then wake the legs up and plan from there.
well, you might find some small loss of aerobic fitness. This would be seen on say an easy aerobic endurance workout like Pettit, where you have a slightly higher HR versus before the holiday. That consistently happens to me, and not jumping immediately back into interval sessions has produced better results. And somewhat related, for recovery weeks I’ve seen better results by keeping some interval work (and not all Pettit-like aerobic endurance workouts).
I was in your situation last year - spent Christmas week at a cabin in the mountains, snow was pretty sparse and I like to ski the steep stuff so it was all about hiking uphill and snow shoeing. Coming back the first three days were a recovery spin with some easy tempo efforts, then an endurance ride, then some shorter intervals. Somewhat like a recovery week. And the following week resumed normal training.
I have had holidays into recovery weeks through plan builder before, in the end I just ignored the TR workouts that week. I think the system needs changing as I was on a nice chilled holiday doing some easy rides…
But you are skiing, so that’s a bit different. In that case I would probably take the recovery week anyway (usually I need a week off after skiing anyway for my liver to recover, not just my quads…)
Skiing holiday now cancelled, can’t get into France anymore.
Right thing to do, but gutted not to be going.
For my training plan, I deleted the annotation I had for the week I was away and plan builder adapted the plan.
I was hoping it would bring the rest week forward, but no, it left the rest week where it is and put in another week of hard efforts between Xmas and the New Year.
Ah that sucks. My brother is probably not going in January either now. I’d been looking to book for March but I think I’ll wait now…
Annotations etc don’t seem to move recovery weeks around, they don’t seem to affect the basic structure of the plan. Personally I think there should be an annotation or other mechanism which allows you to force a recovery week (to match up with your life) but that doesn’t exist at the moment.