More food. More sleep.
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Does anyone have actual data on this? I know everyone says sleep more, recovery recovery recovery, but is there accessible data to support improved performance with more sleep, or is this anecdotal?
I say this as someone who has gotten 8hrs sleep maybe 4 times in the last 30 years 
PERFECT!!! Good, good, good.
Best thing for recovery is sleep. 2nd best thing is neutral to (at this point in the macro) slightly positive calorie balance. 3rd best thing is make sure you are getting enough protein. Sounds like your doing those things so all you need is time for your body to work its magic.
Don’t stop training. Don’t stop workout intensity. Don’t stop training frequency. Do start tapering training volume down.
If you wanna get cryo or massage or red light therapy or sauna or whatever, go for it. I don’t want to harsh your placebo.
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my dad bought one of those when he was on chemo, not sure which model but it sucks at massage. Give me 30 minutes with a TriggerPoint roller and some mobility work, and I’ll feel 100% better than whatever massage chair they bought.
If you are like most 50+ people I know, you’ll rue the day when sleep starts getting interrupted by weird tension in shoulders or upper back or glutes or legs… Started for me at fifty nine. Thats one reason I started doing 20-30 minutes of mobility work every night after dinner. And my wife waking me up from hot flashes in the middle of the night. Toss in having to pee multiple times a night, my sleep is worse now than when we had infants in the house! Every morning is a potential new adventure in the “why is this sore?” game 
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Meb convinced me to start doing a daily stretch and pedestal routine many years ago. But I don’t consider that recovery. That’s an active part of training that makes me faster.
Also, I’d say there is more evidence suggesting stretching makes you slower than there is evidence suggesting that it makes you faster. 
And foam rolling has at best dodgy support in the lit.
But, as I always ask people who tell me it doesn’t help, ‘Why does it feel so good after I do it?’ It just feels so good after I do 5 or 6 minutes of stretching and 4 or 5 minutes of rolling.
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maybe I’m a freak / outlier, but at the end of each day I’m carrying tension in neck, upper back, and hips. Mobility work releases that tension and helps me sleep better. And I have a sit/stand desk and do some basic openers throughout the day.
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BTW, I’m just going to come right out and explicitly say my personal pet hypothesis about all the ‘fringe’ recovery techniques: they are no better than straight meditation.
If you consider all those fringe recovery techniques they all have one thing in common…they induce some sort of mild physical discomfort. Typically a person’s attention goes from external things to internal things when there is a stimulus that causes discomfort. And the more your focus turns to some singular internal thing the more that is like meditation.
Of course, not everybody becomes introspective in the sauna or on the massage table. Which is why there isn’t strong evidence in literature supporting those recovery techniques.
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I think I must not understand what openers are in this context. Maybe something like an activation routine? Or do you really mean…like…a race day opener? I mean, what does the person in the office next to yours think about that…
Either way, great idea! And, for sure, we should all do something like that during recovery weeks but also during training weeks. Just generally a good idea.
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LOL my wife is always complaining of the noise from those race day openers at my sit/stand cycling desk. Maybe I should move the office to the garage? Body openers - open the hips, open the chest, release tension build up from being a #DeskJockey.
I’ve been singular focus meditating for 40+ years, that helped me in college and life. Lately I’ve been increasing the breathing work, good stuff.
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I keep it super-simple.
Eat like a horse.
Bum on sofa, feet up.
Get as much sleep as possible.
The fact that I just set my alarm for 03:25 is going to make the last of those tricky today, but I’ve heroically nailed the other two. 
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I agree that sleep is the most effective method of recovery. After that laying around and relaxing.
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I read an article last year (tried finding it, couldn’t) where they studied a team throughout the length of tour, each morning checking some metrics (don’t remember what, maybe HRV, vitals?). The riders cumulative fatigue increased as each day went on until a rest day, obviously. However, there was one outlier, said rider recovered much better than the rest, of course I don’t remember who. Anyway turns out that rider averaged 9 hours sleep per night where as the rest of the team averaged 7.5-8. Not sayin’ it’s science but was an interesting article.
Yea I’d like to read that.
That said…with as often as this is thrown out there by…well virtually everyone…one would think there were a few honest to goodness studies that supported the claim. Otherwise…are we really sure sleep does anything for riding other than…make you feel less sleepy?
I’m certainly not claiming to have any evidence to support a contradictory claim. Heck I’ve been unable to adjust my own sleep patterns to even do a comparison of 1 person l. It just sort of…smells like the whole higher psi is faster thing because it feels faster. Maybe people feel more recovered and faster because they don’t feel sleepy is what I’m getting at.
In different stages of sleep certain hormones are released that helps your body recover. Not sure what study that was but I believe there was a podcast here that referenced it.
Yea I certainly don’t doubt it. It’s just…everything I have read leads me to believe that sleep is a very complex human activity that is not well understood on a generic level, much less how it specifically impacts the ability to absorb exercise stimuli.
Like sure I assume those hormones are good
Are you doing BWR San Diego?
Yup. You?
Yes, sir! Im going for a two week taper myself. What set up are you running?
I borrowed a gravel bike, it’s one size too big but it’ll do the trick. 40mm tires. First gravel race so don’t know what to expect. Gonna do the 80 mile version, guessing you’re doing the full?
Ps. I started a thread about it here: