The Recovery Ride

Last week, I discovered the concept of "The Recovery Ride".  Well, to say I just now discovered this concept isn't necessarily true.  But rather, I should say I paid attention to what it was.  Why? you might ask?  (Or you might not - who knows). 

Well - here's why:  as I am perusing the interweb, books and magazines, and digesting tweets and FB posts from various super athletes while trying to build this year's training plan, I read about the greatness of the recovery ride.  And upon asking for more information, I was delighted to learn that it consists of a relatively easy and somewhat short ride designed to aid the legs 'recover' from hard rides in prior days.

As someone who loves a good ride - especially an easy and short one - I knew I had to investigate further.  After searching for 0.25s on Google, I was presented with 53,200,000 items to consider.  What I quickly found was that the Recovery Ride basically consisted of the following attributes:

- Should last between 1/2 - 1 hour
- Heart rate should stay in "Zone 1" or low "Zone 2" or 60-65% max HR
- Pedal cadence should be between 80-90 RPM
- Not as important as regular training - they do not significantly improve endurance but do slightly accelerate the recovery process
- May or may not actually be helpful at all - depends on which one of the 53,200,000 you choose to read
- Gives another opportunity to get on the bike on what would otherwise be an "off" day

Given all of that, I decided to do my first Recovery Ride this past Saturday.  I had just completed a day of hard lifting in the gym + an indoor RPM (spinning) class on Thursday, and a hard interval ride on the trainer on Friday.  Saturday would have been of "off" day for me otherwise, so I chose to give the Recovery Ride a go.

My ride:
- Time:  45:13
- 9.94 miles
- Average speed:  13.2 mph
- 687 calories burned
- Average HR: 126
- Average cadence: 82

Impressions:
Enjoyable and easy ride.  Listened to Adele while watching the kids play in the neighborhood from my garage.  I opted to ride on the trainer rather than on actual roads since I knew there would be no way to control my HR while riding on pavement.  And even on the trainer, I found that I had to concentrate to keep my cadence so low which kept my HR down.  Going that slow is HARD!!!! 

I'm not sure of the benefits, however.  I did not marvel at how well my legs felt afterwards as did many who commented on the interweb and in my interviews with real people.  That said - I would do it again.  Any time I can get on the bike, I consider it a good thing.  But as I ramp up my training to include running and swimming, I imagine the Recovery Ride will likely lose out.

So, until next time..........