If you’ve overdone the cycling a bit and are on a recovery, can you actually ride outdoors and do a decent recovery ? Is it just as simple as ‘not pushing on’ or do it really need to be very very gentle? So say 8-10mph road speed on flats for example ?

My Zwift perofrmances have died a death at the moment and i noticed i ‘trained/raced’ for 27 out of 31 days last month. So i took yesterday off, but getting itchy legs for today… But want to recover a bit…

I use the desert route on Zwift, and watch something on Netflix. Have most of NF covering the Zwift windows so I only see the power – that way I’m not tempted to chase anyone.

Recovery outside can be tricky if you’ve got hills, and I do feel a bit odd bimbling on a road bike in lycra. Gentle MTB ride maybe, take in the scenery?

Gentle MTB ride maybe, take in the scenery?

Where i live there’s always the odd hill or 2… even taking them gently may push it over ‘recovery’ i think ?

You can set Zwift to ignore the terrain and just ride to a generated power output i.e 200W or similar. Quite handy for ensuring that you don’t go over the top or chase people down etc. You can ride any route you want in Zwift then without the terrain affecting you. There is a rider choice option in the workouts that you can use to do this.

The phrase I always bear in mind for recovery rides is ‘glass cranks’ – imagine that your pedals are attached not to cranks, but to a couple of your grans ‘special occaisions only’ cut glass champagne flutes. Any pressure through the pedals, the flutes will snap and she will be riled beyond belief; but just keep turning them over and you might just get away with it.

edit. I rarely doa recovery ride on MTB, because I find it ard to keep the same low intnesity momentum you can on road; which inevitably means a few spikes in effort

In my limited experience of recovery rides, it’s easy to ride too hard, using too much power and/or raising your heart rate for it to be of much benefit to aid recovery while not trying to push the envelope. In many ways, I find I have to be a lot more focused on power/cadence/hrm data, as my routes often involve inclines.

I don’t mind doing it on the road.. but i need to leave my village and that really means a decent incline irrespective of what way i go to my destination. It’s arguable that the off-road route is the lesser of the inclines in that sense.

Option 2 is Zwift at 130-140w but i’m not sure i have it in me mentally today for that.

I tend to pick a flatter option but there’s always going to be times where power is into Z2.

Power is what it is, however HR rises slower so I switch my attention to those zones during ramps. So long as they’re relatively short duration and taken steadily it’s rarely an issue.

When you come to any inclines, just remember you’re on a recovery ride and drop down into the easiest gear you can pedal without falling over, I found it deceptive how much power I would put out spinning at ~90rpm in 34/32 on the road bike while slowly climbing inclines up to ~20% (albeit more typically approx 5-10%).

Got any sustrans/old railway lines or canal towpaths that link to parks etc near you?!?!

Went pretty well. Took it really easy, 18km in 1hour 15. Strava estimated my power at 143w and I barely got my HR into 3 figures

Strava estimated my power at 143w

Careful, it’s been 100w out on some of my mtb rides.

I’d been having this same dilemma, wishing I hadn’t taken off the stock 11-32 cassette on my commuter as there’s a couple of hills that require a bit of effort in a 28.

Find recovery rides quite uncomfortable to be honest, think a combo of being slow and no pressure on pedals, need a softer saddle!

Careful, it’s been 100w out on some of my mtb rides

Yeah Strava power is bobbins, continually reports my averages as less than the actual according to the raw PM data accepted by just about every other source. And then there’s weighted power…

Oh i get that… But as i don’t have a PM it was just the figure Strava gave me for the ride.
(plus, it seems it was 114w, not 143w)

In simple terms, it was a very easy ride. On the one climb to get home my time was 10min 13. My PR is 5min or so..

Quite difficult where I live, but I can easily keep HR under 100bpm along the railway paths. No reason why not unless you’re unable to avoid steep inclines or running massive gears.

A nice juicy steak will help you recover just as well as a couple of days of rest. We got wise to that when we used to do Polaris events and we found that we felt tired on the Sunday after riding for 7 hours on Saturday.

Just got back from a recovery ride:

85km with 1225 metres of ascent. Time in HZ1 ->45%; HZ2 -> 50%; HZ3 -> 5%.

Really quite hard round here (Skipton) to avoid hills, this ride was basically up the dale to Buckden and back with just the one “hill” to get home.

My Garmin now gives a recovery time of 29 hours ????

used to use a hrm monitor to do recovery rides – surprising how dumb in terms of effort can be on a short ramp on otherwise flat rides or its a nice morning I feel good lets go – like the glass crank thing