Workouts with Long Recovery Valleys -- What Do You Do?

Hi gang - when you do a TR workout that has long LOW power recover valleys – what do you do? I find myself goosing up the power out of utter boredom. Today I did “Slight Side” that had 10-min recoveries at <50% FTP.

Do the workout as planned. I did Sunny Hay the other day which has similar 10 minute recovery valleys at 40%. Just noodle along, solve Fermat’s Last Theorem in your head or something similar.

You never know when you might need that bit of extra energy!

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Try Shishapangma. 18 minutes rest interval ! I did it this weekend, and had enough time to calculate π to zillion million places, plus uncover the truth of King Tut’s curse.

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Wordle.

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I had one day last week where Wordle took me longer than even an 18-minute rest interval. And that was while riding the couch!

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Recover :joy:

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Find an alternative WO with shorter rest intervals.

Seriously, do rest intervals longer than 5 minutes help? If there is a WO with similar intervals, but shorter rest, I would rather pick that and tag on some endurance work at the end.

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I do all my trainer sessions in Resistance Mode. I ride all recoveries to feel. a rest interval that long would inevitably wind up towards 0.6 or 0.65 before the next interval.

Some recovery valleys will be at 0.3 (especially VO2max with maximal effort intervals).

As long as you aren’t negatively impacting your work sets I don’t think there’s a wrong answer.

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:wink: do the workout outside.

More seriously, it’s summer and we have a nice flat cycle path around our city’s large harbour. I typically find a good place for my interval work such as a hill or other good piece of road near the path. Then for the long recoveries, I’ll pop onto the cycle path, look at the recovery interval time and ride until 1/2 that time’s gone, U turn amd return to where I want to start my interval again.

So, maybe not the response expected, but it works well.

On the trainer some YouTube entertainment is always a good. Lots of videos are in that 10-15 minute range.

If got the time … Enjoy them. If short on time…pause workout and drag marker along a bit to cut out bit of the recovery interval to save time

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Im shortening the rest time in workout creator :slightly_smiling_face:

Zwift, throw some kudos around and look at the ‘scenery’ :laughing:

You can also use the marker to skip warmups as well without AT thinking you struggled on the workout. You can always add on time at the end at Tempo or Sweetspot or whatever if you want more tss…

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If you don’t need the recovery - don’t take it. Sometimes I ride z2 instead of z1 along as I’m confident I can still complete the interval.

Also - as I do mostly outdoor workouts, my recoveries are dependant on terrain, they are never fixed to EXACTLY 5 minutes. last night on my 5x5 with 5 minute rest, my recoveries varied between 4:30 to 5:30 minutes dependant on when I reach the bottom of the hill again. Doesn’t change anything.

I look at some long recovery intervals as some much needed rest and also a way to test my resiliency. If you race or not, what happens when you have some wind at the end of a ride and need to ride hard to get home, or have to put that final push in on a group ride? Wouldn’t you want to know you can do it?

Wordle takes all my time. Wordle 324 1/6*
:green_square::green_square::green_square::green_square::green_square:
Bloody hell! Didn’t even put any thought into it, just went with a regular starting word. And I haven’t even used https://word-finder.com/ .

Legs drills.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a recovery valley that made me think “gee, I wish this were shorter.”

20 minute Sweet Spot intervals on the other hand…

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