Monday morning weekend training hangovers

Anyone else experience this? My 2 longer and or harder rides are on the weekend and Mondays do feel like a bit of a training hangover… I do 200 TSS over the weekend and about 180 during the week. How do you deal with it?

Tea.

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Keeping it simple. I like it. 1 brew on.

Remember that it’s a good kind of tired?

Have Monday as my rest day.

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This :point_up:t4: :point_up:t4: :point_up:t4:

Monday as “recovery” day, weekend hangover after harder training is the only positive thing that happens on Mondays :slight_smile:

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Lol, During our club Thursday night TT season, I skipped a Wednesday night group ride (typically an hour or two at an IF of 0.71 to 0.80) and followed a MV plan substituting weekends frequently for group rides or open TT’s. The Monday rest day and equally a Friday rest day suited me perfectly I think. To get AT to work however, I’ve swapped to a LV plan and being a glutton for punishment/ craving company I ride the Wednesday night group as well as weekends. So I’m ending up riding 6 days a week, the majority of them being hard and only having a Friday rest day. I hope AT accounts properly for out doors group rides soon, so I can go back to having Monday and Friday rest days; I’m definitely had a Monday morning (now afternoon) weekend training hangover :joy:

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What really helps is better base endurance. A few years ago, I was totally zonked out by the weekend group ride. I’d be a zombie for the rest of the day. After doing a polarized block with some long and slow low intensity, my endurance improved dramatically.

Yes, I guess that helps. Life doesn’t seem to care though!

Oh thats good to know. I do skimp on the longer endurance rides being typically time crunched. Though I did do 2 hours 45 mins of zone 2 on the turbo yesterday! Yikes…

My polarized block was all zone 1 -2 for 12 weeks. I started at 7 hours per week and ended the block at 13 hours per week. My only intensity was the Saturday group ride which I continued doing.

By week 7, I was breaking all my Strava PRs on the group ride. It was a huge improvement. Strangely, I didn’t really improve more from week 8 to 12.

:open_mouth:

During the peak of the wee c lockdown, I did a 2hour session which spilled over to 2h24mins on a virtual course with my eagerness to complete the course, which is as long as I would want to spend on a trainer.

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Nice, I’m doing one intensity session on the Saturday group ride and the rest zone 1 and 2. I do do one session with about 20 mins SS. I’m doing about 6 and a half hours. Maybe I’ll try and increase the duration a little and drop the SS session.

Monday is my day off the bike.

Mine too, that doesn’t help the weekend hangover feeling though.

Oh I know, not the best advice but I’ve experienced this often and I just try to typically take it very easy and plug in as much recovery as life allows. Take an extra rest day if needed. Drink tons of water and nourish well.

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Can confirm, I can feel great all day after a long-ish Z2 ride on Sunday. Then come Monday and the general feeling of fatigue has me feeling sluggish all day.

I think it is just the fact that so many of us have a chance to go longer/harder on the weekend and rack up 2x the TSS of the rest of the week. Personally, I usually do ~200 TSS Tuesday-Friday, 250 on Saturday on a hard group ride, and then 120-150 of long Z2 on Sunday. Though generally the lower my power on Sunday the better I feel on Monday, even if I hit similar TSS.

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Diet, sleep and bigger base endurance fitness = better/faster recovery

One thing that made a significant difference for me 2 years ago was moving to a 100% plant based diet. It was immediately noticeable in my recovery, both the same day as long hard workouts and also the day after. No everyone seems to see the same type of benefits though.

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