How long do you rest after hard effort - your "A" race?

[H22EG8]

Tried doing some searching but couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I know I’ve read it somewhere but I can’t find it again… If I missed it, my bad.

Question is after your “A” race, how long do you typically give yourself for rest? I think I set myself up poorly and am trying to “diagnose” myself. Sept 7th was my “A” race then I (I’ll admit this wasn’t the smartest planning) did ramp test on the 10th… followed by my first century Sept 14th. Attached is a screenshot of the workouts after. I’m trying to figure out if I’m sluggish b/c I put myself in a hole or if I’m just stressed and fatigued… maybe both? Thanks!

[onemanpeloton]

I can’t offer much insight here, but if you could give more details of the A race then that might help. Time and intensity would be useful things to know. Some people’s A race might be 1hr long, others could be 12 hours.

[H22EG8]

Good point - A race was relay cycling portion. 57 miles (yeah they added a mile). 2.38 time, 223 TSS. Was the hardest effort I’d ever done solo.

[WildWill]

My rule of thumb is to take one full days rest for each hour are part of racing. So for me and my A race that’s roughly 2 weeks total rest before easing back into training.

[H22EG8]

That sounds like a good rule. Do you ever feel sluggish after the rest period or “good to go”?

[WildWill]

Yes, Always.
But it doesn’t take long to get back into it. The danger is always with starting back too early. If you have not recovered enough it is much harder to return

[pcort]

also if you followed the plans and peaked before your race, you won’t be able to hold that peak for very long and your fitness could be waning and you’re trying to keep propping it up.

Also, since you said it ‘Was the hardest effort I’d ever done solo’ there could be an amount of mental fatigue that’s making it hard to stick through workouts, especially easy ones. I found when I jump on and do something like dans or beech, if I’m mentally fatigued they’re really hard and I feel like crap. You did a lot of work both mentally and physically, and may not have let your body and mind recover completely.

[H22EG8]

Can truly say I didn’t think about the mental portion of it. I’ve started experiencing my first sign of over-training (insomnia). It’s time to listen to my body and take a break.

It’s so weird but mentally I feel like the body should be able to just keep pushing. Alas, it’s not a thing.

[vladrath]

I’ll share my example.

I tried doing 3 ‘A’ or whatever they could be considered races.

I did DK200 on June 1st. Following 3 days off and then 2 easy days. By the next saturday I tried doing hard efforts and backed down both to Z2 rides.

Then Coast2Coast (210m) in Michigan on June 22nd. I took 4 days off and than easy Z2 rides until the 4th of July when I had a longer group ride thing.

Finally I went to do the Crusher (225, but DNF’d at 170) in the UP of Michigan on July 20th. Then I was so cracked, mentally and kind of physically that I took 9 days off, did 1 z2 ride, then took another 4 days off.

So, I think looking back I needed more time off the bike after the first races and shouldn’t have done the third race.

I wonder if I took 1 day per 100 TSS if that would have been suitable.

DK took 18 hours so I don’t think I would have taken 18 days off after that. But I had a 700 TSS day and I bet that I could have used 7 days off the bike.

Coast2Coast was 500 TSS, I took 4 days off and recovered a lot better than DK.

By the Crusher I was in a phase of over-training. So I needed some serious time off, two weeks, than a TR rest week to recover from my season.

Since then I’m looking through my training peaks calendar and notice that I have set a number of PRs for the year or lifetime after the break.

It’s so hard to tell if you are having trouble in the moment. I know in the future I’ll have a plan for my breaks following big races and plan my year a little more conservatively.

[Tanner1280]

I don’t think you can really apply any hard and fast rules. As you said, just listen to your body.

You have to remember also that everyone’s experience is going to differ dramatically based on their training load. Someone conditioned to maintain 800+TSS/wk is going to have a very different response to a race than someone doing much less and vice versa.

[H22EG8]

Then I was so cracked, mentally and kind of physically that I took 9 days off, did 1 z2 ride, then took another 4 days off.

It’s amazing to me how some of us can mentally push ourselves to the point of breaking. I always used to have the mentality that if you did the right stuff, stretch, sleep, eat… you could break through these barriers. Obviously it needs to be done over a certain time frame. I’m floored how some of you guys can nail such impressive numbers.

Thank you the great response.

[H22EG8]

I guess I fall victim to what many of us do which is compare to others. I can’t even fathom doing those TSS numbers (granted to quote @chad “not all tss is the same”)… but still, I’m currently in that stage between low volume and mid-volume and have been finding the transition attempt “interesting” to say the least.

[samyall]

Not a bad rule of thumb, but falls apart for me on my 50+ hour bikepacking races…

[WildWill]

Yep. Its the same issue for multi-day races - I did 3 marathons in 3 days once, And my rule of thumb was no good for that too

[H22EG8]

Well that’s somewhat masochistic… lol… bravo sir.

I clearly didn’t even bother scheduling any kind of rest. Kind of silly to not do so but it is what it is. Onto resting like a pro!

[brendanhousler]

what was your TSB after the race and what is it now? How much did you increase CTL before the race, maybe too much and didn’t taper? Lots going on beyond a screens shot (not being snarky, just trying to open the convo open so we can get more details)

Brendan

[H22EG8]

After googling some of those terms… here is a snippet of the week before the relay, the relay, then the century after. Inclusive of the silly ramp test I shouldn’t have done after the relay…

[brendanhousler]

thanks! Hard to gauge everything from just a screenshot. If you have data in Training peaks I’d be happy to upload it all and take a look for you. Just let me know.

Brendan

[trswem]

Most years about two to three months…