Jacque Anquetil's 1962 Tour de France Winning Bike

Monday, February 13, 2012

Consecutive Hard Rides

Everyone who's anyone tells you not to do consecutive hard days in training.  We get stronger by allowing our bodies to recover, for it is during recovery that we build up strength to better tolerate previous day's workout.  It's true, go look it up.

This doesn't mean that during 366 days of riding I'm not going to do stupid things.  You've seen many examples of on-bike stupidity, so what's another one?  I went to the gym today, thinking I'd see how I feel during the warm-up and if I felt good, I'd do the workout and if not, I'd take it easy and do a recovery day.  Right off the bat, my cadence was through the roof.  I don't know why, but I was riding a good mile an hour faster than normal and, if anything, it felt easier than my normal base pace.  This was all the information I needed to decide on the kind of workout this would be -- a hard one.  We did rollers and steady state efforts again.  I felt good the entire 90 minutes.  Allison, our instructor, polled us about RPE after every steady-state effort.  These were to be in high zone 2 to mid zone 3.  I started out in low 3 and progressed to high 3, as the class went on and I continued to feel good.  Other peoples' RPEs were 8 and my was 7 for the first three efforts and 7.5 during the last one in high zone 3.

After the class, I felt good too.  I walked 10 blocks to BART and the walk felt fine.  There were no seats on the train and as I stood, I felt my legs going dead.  Three hours later they still feel good and swollen, climbing stairs is a chore, and I'm incapable of any respectable effort.  Tomorrow will definitely be a recovery day.  Zone 1, here I come.

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