Post race recovery advice

Training
1

This past weekend I did an omnium with a road race/TT on Saturday then 2 40min crits on Sunday. We got rained out on Sunday so I opted for 90min threshold workout. This was an A event for me so TR built a small taper in. Before this week I had been averaging around 10hrs per week in the 500-600 TSS range. Race week was a very similar TSS with the taper.

TR had me set up for a recovery week following the race. I did 2 90min low z2 rides early in the week and my legs felt pretty awful off the bike. No trouble during the rides but it seems like I’m carrying a ton of fatigue even now a week after the race. I opted to take a few extra days off from fri-mon but I’m honestly surprised at how bad the legs feel. It’s comparable to the hours after a really hard vo2 or threshold workout where the legs just beg for mercy climbing a few flights of stairs.

I’ve done plenty of hard rides and races in the past but have never experienced this degree of fatigue lasting so long after a race. All in all I’m getting older(39) and certainly don’t recover like I used to. Sleep and nutrition have all been dialed.

Just curious as to everyone’s thoughts and experiences.

2

My experience is if I take too much time off my legs feel horrible. It takes one to two weeks of riding for my legs to come back around. This is usually because my taper into my “A” race followed by a recovery week is so much less volume than what I had been doing the previous months. My body seems to go into full on rest mode and it takes a couple weeks of training for my body to get back into it. I just push through horrible legs and eventually, they come around.

I’m not recommending this, however for me, this is why I don’t take days off. I’ll take very easy days of spinning, but no days off. I simply feel better on this plan.