The Art of the Recovery Ride
Of all the types of training rides one can do, the recovery ride may be the toughest one of all! In honor of its difficulty to master, let’s go with the properly capitalized Recovery Ride. As I mentioned in my article on Zone 2 riding, our tendency when heading out for a bike ride is a middle sort of intensity on every ride. It feels good. Hard enough to feel it but not super painful. There is a time and place for rides like that, but today let’s focus on The Art of The Recovery Ride and set yourself up for success in your training that lies ahead!
Recovery Rides are typically described as Zone 1 riding. For power levels, this is below 55% of Functional Threshold Power (FTP). If you are going by heart rate, these keep you under 81% of your Lactate Threshold Heart Rate (LTHR). On a Rating of Perceived Exertion scale (RPE), we are down near 1-2/10. This means easy, so easy it feels like an absolute waste of time to do! From my observation over the years, this usually lures riders into simply doing them wrong.
In a normal training week, you will likely only have 1 or 2 Recovery Rides in the mix. They are usually an alternative to a full day off. Of all the recovery gadgets at your disposal, the one with the most evidence is still some gentle exercise! I’ve also noticed that most cyclists simply like going for bike rides, and this a great reason to spin the legs a bit. The purpose of these is not to build fitness on the day you do them, but to allow for better recovery to perform better in the days after.
Let’s say I have convinced you to do these, right? Good! Look, pros do them so you should too! Now we can talk about practical tips on how to get them done correctly.
Timing: These need to be placed well to have any benefit. I like to have them in between days of hard workouts mid week, although most common would be on a Friday before a big weekend of riding. They also fit well with two or three in a row during a recovery week, which should happen every few weeks. You can also revert to a recovery ride if you get out for a workout and realize you simply cannot complete it that day. Chill and save the hard work for another day! This particular pace of riding (Zone 1) is also important for warming up before rides. Don’t skip it. There are times these DON’T work also. If you are fresh and physically ready for a hard ride, get to work. I mention this as many riders wake up feeling awful with a hard ride on the schedule and do great once they ride easy for 15 minutes.
Terrain: The best place is somewhere really flat or on an indoor trainer. I would say the trainer is the best option but one could make a case for being outside too, with the benefits of being outside on a nice day. If you go outside, you will be in a gear that is very very easy to spin but not so low that your legs or freewheeling or it feels like you can’t pedal normally. If you live in a hilly area, you can still do these outside depending on your bike’s gearing and your threshold power. Take note of your power, cadence, and the hill gradient as you head upwards. Our goal is to keep power under 55% FTP at all times and also keep cadence fairly easy…probably over 65-70 RPM. My bike has very easy gearing and I can get up hills up to 9-10 % grade and stay within the ride prescription. You will quickly figure out the best route in your area and which hills or areas to avoid. Very cold weather also tilts the scales towards riding inside as it is hard to get warm riding this easily. For the mountain bikers, Recovery Rides often mean a gravel road and avoiding the punchy nature of riding on trails.
Duration: 40-60 minutes is a great time period to shoot for. Under 30 minutes is close to wasting time getting ready to ride and over 60 minutes starts to bring on some fatigue just from being on the bike.
Heart Rate: If you don’t have a power meter, you will likely be looking at heart rate for these rides. I know I mentioned keeping heart rate under 81% of LTHR, but avoid the temptation to keep heart rate right around this point as it will lead you into riding too hard. I think 70% of LTHR is probably a good number to focus on and less than that is fine. My LTHR is 171 and I am often around 110-130 on Recovery Rides.
Power: Keep an eye on 3 second Average Power as well as IF (Intensity Factor) on your ride. You can also set up a screen to check cumulative time in power zones 1,2, and 3. Power should stay under 55% of FTP at all times and will probably shift between 35-55 %. A good IF when you get done is often around .40. Super low! This takes patience and practice. When you get finished, take a look at your time in power zones. You should have almost all Zone 1, maybe a little Zone 2 (less than a couple minutes), and absolutely zero Zone 3. I know…I’m no fun. Sorry. Below you can see a couple examples.
RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion): Keep it chill. You should notice runners passing you and would feel embarrassed to upload your Strava. That means you are doing them correctly! I sometimes pretend like my drivetrain is barely holding together and if I press hard it might be the end of it. Another trick is to think of riding clipless pedals in thin flip flops or barefoot. You can’t press hard because it hurts! Don’t be scared to go really low on power if your legs are sore…even below 100 watts is good.
Group Rides: This is usually a deal breaker for a Recovery Ride and I see it in rider’s power files. If you are with similar ability riders and have a deal to only go easy it can work. The temptation to go hard in a group is wired into us, fair warning!
I should mention that not everyone needs these. If you go walk your dog for an hour after work, that can easily take the place of a Recovery Ride. Also, consider the rest of your day. I rode 4 hours yesterday and know I will be doing a good bit of house cleaning today, so I scratched the Recovery Ride from my schedule. Oftentimes, absolute beginners don’t need these rides, they need to take a day off! I find these rides get more and more important the harder your training blocks are. If you are doing Anaerobic Capacity or VO2 Max work, getting these in between days is really helpful to prevent the “dead leg” feeling on hard days.
It is almost cliche advice at the point, but keeping hard days hard and easy days easy is absolutely critical to your development as a rider. Even if you never want to enter a race, I doubt any of us wants to get slower on climbs or get dropped by our friends on every single ride! In the interest of more of your rides being awesome, I encourage all of you to invest the effort in mastering the art of the toughest workout of them all: The Recovery Ride.
