I started my rest week and noticed that I am getting quite a bit of DOMS (even worse than during the regular weeks) and am always hungry. Is this normal? Is all the fatigue I’ve been piling on over the last few weeks catching up with me? Should I wait another week or so just to freshen up completely? Just finishing up SSB 1 after recovering from an injury and can hardly complete the endurance rides at the end of the plan.
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I think so. There may be a thread around (I will search later), but during my recovery week I was famished all week and struggled to keep my weight level.
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I’m in the same boat. Not really DOMS, but insatiable hunger.
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+1 for feeling low. I’m in the midst of a rest week now and I feeling like I could eat a whole house. Just part of it I guess; I’m sure next week I’ll feel energized and ready to get stuck into some sweet spot 
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Just had a recovery last week after Traditional Base 3 MV, which ended with a 3:30 hour trainer ride where I burned 2116 calories. I couldn’t eat enough for 5 days straight. Yeah, I think recovery week hunger is normal.
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It’s working. Recovery weeks tend feel like this. My understanding is your body is trying to go into deep recovery. If your life allows it just sleep 16 hours a day and it will pass 
Eat well but don’t over eat. You (ideally) are not burning the same calories as a non recovery week.
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I’ve experienced this too. Crazy hungry despite lower work load. I used to sit around during rest weeks worrying about getting fat.
-Hugh
(my blog: ex-prosays.blogspot.com)
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Haha I have the same, my weight will go up for that week and drop back to normal levels in the first week of the new phase.
In addition also start to feel little aches in my muscles which I normally don’t feel when I am in a regular training week. Those aches also disappear as soon as the new phase starts.
Yeah I think it’s normal to be super hungry all the time, at least in my experience anyway. It seems to be sweetspot work that does it for me. I’m trying to follow the endurance diet philosophy of if I’m hungry I’ll eat but it’s has to be high quality nutritious food.
Another +1. Very very hungry. I actually commented to my wife about this the other day, how it’s easier to eat less when the workload is high.
Recovery week means time to recover, though, so it’s definitely not worth starving yourself!
Timely post, I am feeling EXACTLY this (currently in SSB-MV-2 Recovery Week);
I notice it mostly going up and down the stairs in my house.
Noticed it in the SSB-MV-1 recovery week too.
My legs somehow burn more going up and down the stairs during the recovery weeks than during the training blocks. It seemed counter-intuitive as I was expecting all this awesome fresh-ness and ‘spring’ to come back to my legs through the recovery weeks…
And all I seem to be rewarded with is DOMS, insatiable hunger…
…and a higher FTP at the next ramp test; completely ensuring that the next round of training blocks will ‘feel’ just as hard -probably harder- than the last round of training blocks.
It never gets easier, you just get faster, or something like that?
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Speaking the truth there!
I’m always left dumbfounded at the end of my recovery weeks how NOT recovered my legs feel. Then I get a higher FTP and “awarded” by making the ensuing weeks even harder. Thank you for the punch in the face… may I have another.
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I think that is normal, at least i almost always feel that way for at least part of any rest week. I just attribute it (very unscientifically) to your body going into recovery mode when you take the stress off. The muscles go to work repairing themselves (hence the soreness) and they crave fuel to do that work.
Whatever it is, this is why TdF riders still ride on rest days. Rest is good but it is a process and sometimes the process is one step back to end up two steps forward.