They say one of the hardest rides to do is a proper recovery ride. A recovery ride where you really take it easy. One hour of gentle spinning, nothing over 60% of max heart rate. The problem is that, because it feels so easy, we instinctively want to make a recovery ride a little bit longer and faster. It requires a certain confidence and discipline to really believe in the power of recovery.
Believe it or not, I’ve done 40 mile ‘recovery’ rides and come back with an average speed of close to 20 mph! Good job I don’t have a coach to tell me off for breaking all the rules of recovery rides. But, after the National 100 yesterday, I really felt like a ‘proper’ recovery ride. I managed 16 miles, in 1 hour 15 – averaging 13.4 mph. I cycled to Ilkley, but couldn’t resist taking the scenic way back over the Cow & Calf climb. That’s the problem with Yorkshire, you go out for a recovery ride and come back with 500 metres of vertical ascent on the clock. I did managed to go incredibly slowly up the Cow and Calf. I don’t really enjoy slow recovery rides, but at least, this time, I managed to make it a recovery.
One interesting thing with riding so slowly is that there’s a different dynamic with cars. On some of the moor roads, you feel more visible, more of a presence because you’re going so slow. Part of me thinks I should speed up – just so as not to hold up the car behind.
I remember quite well the first time I went on a proper bike ride. I was probably 13 or 14. It was 35 miles to Burnsall. It was a huge achievement to make it and I probably couldn’t walk for the next 2 days.
In those days, the only training / racing I knew was to ride the bike and try and come back with the highest possible average speed. I used to religiously record my average speeds and try and improve them. I remember quite well, my average speed on that ride was 13.5 mph. That was the benchmark for quite a few months. By the end of the year, I’d managed an 18mph ride which I was absolutely chuffed to bits with! I never did recovery rides in those days. I think every single ride I did was to go as fast or as far as I could. There were no half measures, every ride was a race against the average speed on my 5 function speedometer.
But, then I learnt it’s nice to through away the computer and just enjoy the bike ride!
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