Four hour rest day.

Originally I requested Monday and Tuesday as vacation time from work because NH school teachers KL and the Cronoman are on break this week and I wanted to get in some extra saddle time with them. Logistical problems and predictions of rain made me think about cancelling at the last minute, but with the long drive home from NY Sunday night, keeping Monday was a no-brainer even if it were going to rain. That went well, as it did rain, not buckets, but badly needing a rest day anyway, I was able to hang out with the fräu and do some shopping and just plain rest.

Once again on Monday night, I slept well for a change, and waking on Tuesday the skies were sunny so I figured no way I am going to work. Still feeling pretty burnt from the past week, I had no plan for training. If the weather held out, Wompatuck was a possibility, so I considered doing an easy spin in the morning and then heading over for the world famous Tuesday Night Titans training race. Reviewing my training log for possible causes of my recent fatigue led me to change my mind. My volume has not been all that high, in fact only 27 hours on the bike and 4 hours running for the first 24 days of this month. The first weekend of the month had the Cohasset 10K, so I had gone into that with a very light recovery week of only 7 hours total. The subsequent weeks were a nice gradual build of 8, 9, then 10 hours, which should not have left me so wiped out. ???? Upon closer inspection, knowing that I had been upping the intensity, I brought up a stacked bar chart of time by HR zone for the past 9 days, summarized by day. These charts are a cool feature of the Polar software and allow you to get a quick look at which HR range you have been training in.

What I found was due to BKR, my running workout, my interval session, and the two races this past weekend I had 15 hours in 9 days, with 31% of it in zone 4 (sub LT) and above. Contrasting this with an overall average of 17-19% intensity and I can see this was a very hard week. Races will do that to you. So despite taking two days with practically no training, and two more days with only an easy hour, there was a lot of quality (not to mention driving) during this period and I found myself quite wasted. Having this come on the tail of a three week buildup, modest as it was, contributed to the load (huh-huh) as well.

The weather on Tuesday wavered on getting overcast, but by noontime I was tired of surfing the net and blogging, the temps were looking pretty good, and the sun was returning to the sky. Dressing a bit more than I otherwise might for a 60 degree day, I headed out for an easy ride. I thought maybe 2.5 hours, but once I got out there I started thinking more. It has been a long time since I did a ride like this. I don't know if it is "junk," recovery, LSD, or what, but it was enjoyable. The wind was not too bad, and there are plenty of flat roads around here, so I just rolled along in zone 1 enjoying the sunshine and lack of traffic you get during a workday. No pressure, just rolling along at 27k/hour in a light gear. At 3 hours I found myself a half hour from home with the breeze at my back, so I considered cutting it short, but eventually I improvised a loop around a neighboring town and brought it home just over 4 hours. Staying out for another hour crossed my mind, because it is amazing how little fatigue you accumulate when you're not going hard, but since this was supposed to be a recovery day I headed in and relaxed with some good food. Maybe it is not essential training, but if you never ride long and easy all by yourself on a nice day, try it sometime. This bicycle riding stuff is pretty sweet. Thanks for reading.