Hey all, just wanted to see if anyone else has had experience with this. I decided to take a full week off of the bike, since I never took a break, even after my racing season ended. Coupled with daylight savings + 2 extremely difficult build phases and watching my power drop ever so slowly, I was feeling extremely exhausted…to the point that a few coworkers pointed out how drained I was.
During the break, I did nothing, but sleep/relax, eat well and take higher dosages of vitamin D3. I feel extremely refreshed, and more motivated for sure. I decided that I would take it easier with my first week back, and do nothing but Tempo+ lower end sweet spot work outs. What I found is that my heart rate is all over the place…basically +10 in my categories…so like doing tempo/sweetspot, has my heart rate where I normally would see during threshold. I don’t feel like I’m doing threshold, and am finishing each of my workouts feeling, hey I could do +1 +2 more intervals and would be alright!
I plan on redoing my ramp test at the end of the week, to see how much fitness I lost, and then retool my plan. But just was curious if anyone has experience with this, how long did it take for your heart rate to get back to normal? Did you lose a ton of fitness over just a week? Etc, etc.
Thanks in advance!
Don’t be too crazy about that. In my case, time off the bike and increased HR after it is normal and after a few sessions everything just get back to normal. I can noticed increased HR after recovery week too and I read it as a good sign. It means I’m fresh.