The week below was a scheduled recovery week in the periodised routine. However the first part of the week suggested I could do more than the 1-hour recovery session on 27th and a lower endurance session with 2 x 10min tempo on the 29th, but I stuck with it. My readings for the second part of the week suggested it was a good idea to stick to the plan though. Saturday the 1st November was a club ride; again I get these types of readings on club ride day. How much was down to excitement/anxiety or whether it was an indication of something else I don’t know, but hoping the former, as this is a common pattern. But I went into a group that suited a recovery week as best it could; 47% was in zone 1 recovery, 26% in zone 2 endurance, 11% in zone 3 Tempo for the 2-hour ride. Sunday 1st reading suggested it might have been a mistake, but again I was meeting up for a ride; 40% in recovery zone, 36% in endurance and 11% in Tempo for the 1.5-hour ride. Reading on the 2nd November maybe suggested the lower intensity policy was correct and that I possibly shouldn’t have done one of the weekend rides.
Due to a very busy week, I didn’t really stick with the training plan workouts, but instead simply went for rides/trained when I could. The readings seemed to cluster around a similar area, mostly lower energy, due to the busy week no doubt. 3rd I did 70mins on the turbo, endurance based session but with some threshold intervals. 4th was a simple recovery session as the reading was dipping further into the lighter training zone. Friday 6th was a 2hr 30 min endurance ride, and Sunday 8th a 2 hr endurance/tempo ride. The reading on the 9th suggested it was about right, with that day being a day off.
The week below was not a good week. I felt very lethargic and un-motivated. I began the week on a poor reading, so figured taking early nights and having plenty of sleep, with a view to continue training mid-week. But even this didn’t work out, and mostly the weeks readings are poor. Even those that were in the normal zone were verging on poor readings. In fact the one on the 14th was a red warning on the app, and this was after a week of not training, so nothing intensive to suggest the reason.
The week below still didn’t start off too good, even after a full (previous) week off. So I did a 1 hour recovery session on the 16th, but even that didn’t help as the next day was a red warning. But the 18th was better, so did a 1 hour endurance session with 2 x 10min tempo intervals. But the day after again gave me a red warning. So waited until the 20th for the next session; 1 hr 20mins of endurance with 1 x 15 minute tempo effort, nothing too intense as I had a sportive looming on the 22nd. We were due to do the 70 mile route (Evans Leicester Ride It), but a mechanical forced us to do the 50 mile, which was probably for the best considering the weeks readings. Still, the ride went well, and not too bad a reading on the 23rd as it was low recovery alone without high activation. The general trend though over the last 2 weeks is lower recovery and higher activation, so I will need to be mindful of this going forward.
Profile;
I am a recreatio
nal athlete, who has around 5 to 8 hours a week to train (season dependant). I have a family with 2 young children and run a business. Therefore the ethos of my training is to use training principles that elicit the best results in minimal time. By comparison to my cycling friends, I would class myself as average