How to recover cardiovascular fitness in 2 weeks?

First day back on the bike today after a month’s enforced layoff. Felt great but my breathing is just ****ed- the legs seem alright but I was running out of breath in every section, engine is big but fuel tank is tiny. I’m not usaully that fit a rider- quite strong, but the cardio side’s always let me down anyway. I don’t usually “train” but I’ve got a turbo, got a sprinty commute, and got some running shoes…

First round of the scottish enduro series in 2 weeks and as it stands I’m not even going to be able to make my usual 200th place 🙂

Cheers folks!

HIIT? Usually works wonders for me, both legs and lungs.

What is HIIT?

I am very interested in this thread.. Same as you, leg is ok..but for the love of god..i stop every section to catch my breath and have the air drowning feeling 😕

HIIT is pain.

HTH.

I’m going to guess at high intensity interval training?

Hold on, 2 weeks is not much time at all.

If you train hard for the next 2 weeks, then on the day of the race you’ll still be tired and actually do worse than if you’d done nothing.

How about doing a week of pretty hard rides or turbo sessions then spend a week tapering (maintain intensity but drop duration by 20% each ride), eating well and getting to bed early?

no idea but try a cup of concrete

I was in a similar boat last year after breaking my hand.

1 month free subscription to trainer road and off you go. Ride everywhere and eat well.

This year after failing to train very much at all for the big 4 day 200km XC stage race last weekend I winged it by doing as much quality work as I could. Most of the stages were 16-22km so I was hitting 1-1hr30 rides hard and that was about it. Much to the annoyance of the people who knew me I came in 171st (within top 50%) by going hard on the short stages and surviving the long ones, most expected me to crash and burn…

This won’t fix you in 2 weeks, but I’d suggest getting a heart rate monitor. You can then train in the correct heart rate training zone to build fitness. Here’s some info.

First ride after a month off is always horrible… the next one will be better… and so the process continues.

Get out and have fun.

Your month off wasn’t due to a respiratory illness, was it?

I’d do shortish tough intervals on the turbo every 2nd days for 7 to 9 days. Focus on the quality of your recovery days. Loads of kip. Eat well. Oily fish (or a supplement) might help keep inflammation down.

Wouldn’t do much the 2nd week. Your commute will probably be plenty. Don’t sprint too much.

Might be enough to give you a useable improvement.

Let us know you you get on. Very envious!

So what are the big honkin 29ers then? – Northwind

No need for fitness the big wheels will give you an extra x.n% and help you to a much better placing so long as you don’t do a Mitch Ropelato in SA though….

Cheers folks, horrible intervals it is!

@Mike, this particular race will be done with the crushing disadvantage of obsolete 26 inch wheels. AND a straight steerer. it’s amazing I can even get up the hill.

arrpee – Member

Your month off wasn’t due to a respiratory illness, was it?

Nope, unusually slow to recover broken rib and a bunch of muscle problems related. To be fair I think I’m still not breathing quite right but it’s definitely not just that.

cup of concrete it is then

If you’ve got a turbo and Trainerroad, try something along the lines of the Tour of Sufferlandria. Basically a load of varied interval sessions over the next 7-10 days then a couple if days off before the race.

The common thoughts are that for every week doing nothing you need two weeks to recover fitness. This has a lot of variables contained within it though and might be a little misleading but essentially you won’t gain too much by beasting yourself for two weeks before an event.

The other often quoted snippet is that it takes a few weeks for the effect of training to materialise as improved fitness. The adaptation is instant and takes time. Again, it isn’t quite as simple as that but two weeks won’t see you improve fitness too much if at all.

Gains in fitness made quickly also seem to be lost quickly and the flip side would be if you have been riding consistently for years then a month off might have little effect on fitness- more that you need to get your body accustomed to riding again.

IMO you are better off easing back in to the riding you would normally do in terms of the fitness/ climbing side of things and get your body used to riding again. Throw in a focus on getting the descending skills as sharp as they can be and you’ll probably make up more time there than destroying yourself on a turbo so close to the event. Keeping your body as fresh as possible between now and then will also help a lot too.

The common thoughts are that for every week doing nothing you need two weeks to recover fitness.

Bugger 🙁

Decided I might as well try some interval stuff- can’t hurt. Oh no wait it can hurt quite a lot! Horrendous. If turbo training is biking without any of the good bits, tabata turboing is like turboing without even the less horrible bits.

iDave programme?

On the basis of 2 weeks to get back every one missed – I should back to my previous level of poor fitness in about……..208 weeks or 4 years give or take a day!! 😯

You are going to be crap in the race 😀 so just do it and enjoy (?) it and aim for something further down the line to ‘race’ properly.

Do some intervals and concentrate on a team sky like steady effort on race day. Every lung screaming anaerobic effort digs into the bank for limited gains that can be undone when the overdraft facility is exceeded.

lol on the team Sky comparison 🙂 Porte just rode around Tassie the other day and was off for a 90km ride at power levels I can’t comprehend!! But I can confirm that I know where one of those Pinerello mountain bikes ended up…

You’re doing the enduro, so I’d do more than intervals in order to have some endurance.

A couple of interval sessions this week, a long/hard ride at the weekend, maybe one interval session next week.

@stevebbrain, the idea is to enjoy it- not much fun running out of steam halfway down the stages! It’s going to need a body swap to get me to a competitive level. And also a head swap.

cynic-al, endurance doesn’t seem to be a problem… My cardio’s always been the weak spot for me so I guess it’s just the layoff is most obvious where I was already weakest.

It’s on the 22nd/23rd though… that’s 2 weeks and 3 days!
That’s ages…

Hill Sprints for the rest of this week then normal riding to recover from the hill sprints.

Unless Spooks sending you up Lazy K or Zig and Zag for a climb stage, you’ll probably get away with pointing it down hill and hanging on.

Yeah, I’m allowing that extra week for resting and eating biscuits 😆 2 weeks to work with.

Just been for a run. Running’s shit! Why do runners not warn you?

How do enduros work? If you are faster on the downhill times stages does that give you longer in the transition stage?

If so surely a case of MTFU on the downs, never touch the brakes, then push up all the big hills inbetween?

Either way I always find fitness improves massively after a few rides, so a couple of bimbles between now and then should suffice.

It’s timed descents, untimed climbs. As far as I know they’re using the sensible unseeded format where you get a set amount of time for the lap and so there’s not that much restraint on climb time- pushing round might take too long but I’ve never had to rush. But that’s not really the issue, being able to pedal like **** whenever possible on the way down is though!

(especially if you are breathtakingly slow in all the tricky bits. You know, just for instance)

Just been for a run. Running’s shit! Why do runners not warn you?

It’s like parenting, you wouldn’t do it if you had the slightest idea 🙂

On the plus side, it’s made me appreciate all the time I’ve spent today not running.

You normally race off the training you did 3 weeks ago. Ooh, so close! The good news is there’s loads to be gained from hitting rock bottom. Do some stuff, it’ll be fine.

@Northwind forgot to mention running’s shit if you’ve had a lay off 😀

Good way to get fitness back a little quicker though…. unless you are an old fu***r like me.

stever – Member

You normally race off the training you did 3 weeks ago. Ooh, so close

Thing is I normally race off the no training I have ever done ever, so it’s probably not quite the same as for a proper racer. I ride despite the fitness benefits but from time to time, it’s useful to be a bit fitter and it’s really bumming me out that I can’t spring a section the way I usually would, everything feels slow and hard work.

Would be very interested to find out how this ends up – I’ve tried to recover fitness in two weeks using a variety of methods, but always end up knackered by the third week.

Think it’s going to be hard to draw any useful conclusions tbh, I am shattered just now so apparently it’s doing something 👿 but it’s so unscientific, I went for a ride yesterday and felt better but maybe I was just better adapted to things and adjusting for it, who really knows.

Hah, not just me that’s feeling knackered, just blew out the back tyre on the turbo 😆

Righto, so the end result was… Partial success. Still blew up completely on the long pedally stage trying to ride it at my normal pace, but I think I’d have been a lot worse as I was before the crash course in fitness pain. Did struggle with fitness all through the day but then I think even if I’d been in top form that’d be the case. So I ended up having a pretty hard day of it but not a disaster.

So all in all, worth the attempt and it made things more fun on the day but it was pretty horrible trying to get back up to speed. It’s hard to really weigh one against the other, I’ll not be keeping it up at that level though, just too much impact on day to day life, feeling shagged all the time!

great timing to see this one pop back up again as I’ve just had nearly 3 weeks off the bike with near fatal man flu.

Time to hit the bike again this weekend and the missus is going to kick my arse all round the trails….

3 weeks? Try 3 (nearly 4) months off! I’m so un-fit, if I try and exercise I just end up tired and demotivated, I can’t get to the point where the rush of endorphines counteracts the general crapness of exercise!

Yep I did the 3 months off this time last year, thats when we got the turbo… (and it’s summer here)