by Danielle Foster

As a cyclist, what is important to you? For many of us, it is the ability to go a little faster for a littler longer-to produce more power with less effort. As Joey Adams stated last month, it’s about producing more power at less cost, aka, The Green Ride.

Big deposits were put into your bank last winter while following the great training advice of Robbie, Allen, Angie, and Joey. Now you’re spending like Donald Trump, putting out lots of energy during race season. Group rides, privately coached sessions, back-to-back weekend races--whew--big withdrawals all week long. Where are you going to find some extra cash? Think of active recovery as your off-shore account: you can keep spending intelligently if you tap that active recovery account to keep your freshness factor high.

Let’s go back to a simple statement from Dr. Phillip Maffetone:

TRAINING = WORKOUT + REST

How can YOU maximize the time you spend training? By spending time riding active recovery in your Power Zone (PZ) 1. This effort level is not hard enough by taxing the heart, lungs, and muscles. Instead, it is where the regeneration and repair of muscle tissue begins. Recovery should push fitness to the next level. By definition, recovery is the repair of micro-tears in the muscles and connective tissue that occur during a workout. It is also the restoration of enzymes within the muscle fibres, and it puts ‘money in the bank’ by replenishing glycogen stores.

When muscles are tired, two to three days of light training help serum hormone levels return to normal levels compared to the elevated levels achieved after more intense exercise. Decreasing the level of lactic acid in the muscles is another benefit of active recovery. The achey, sore feeling experienced with high-end efforts can be counterbalanced by the ‘flush’ that comes with the clearance of metabolic waste while riding in Power Zone 1.

We weren’t born as Starfish, so we can’t grow new legs, but we CAN take some advice from Dara Torres, the 41-year old Olympic swimmer who took Beijing by storm. She states that “recovery is the most important word in her training.” Athletes need to rest as hard as they train. Nutrition also plays a big role, as well as the state you’re in before a workout. Are you getting the 8-10 hours of sleep recommended for an athlete? What were your hydration levels? How long was the workout, and how hard? Is power increasing over time while heart rate response is decreasing? Are you looking forward to training, or dreading it? Here are some tell-tale signs of overtraining:

- Diminished performance
- Reduced desire to compete or workout
- Structural injury
- Recurrent infections ( get a cold easily)
- Depression
- Exhaustion
- Menstrual dysfunction
- Disordered eating

How much recovery is best for you? Identifying that perfect balance is the hardest part of creating a plan. Researchers at McMasters University in Hamilton, Ontario, and The Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis did a study on optimal recovery. Their findings show the restoration process peaks approximately 24 hours after a training session. They also found that around the 36-hour mark, the repair job is basically over, and the muscles are back to running things business as usual.

If your training diary has seven days a week of ‘laying the smack down,’ give yourself a gift and try this:

- Warmup: 10 minutes or more with light resistance, creeping the watts up to PZ1

- Have 40 minutes of cadence play with a goal of maintaining continuous power while remaining in PZ1. Begin @ 80 rpm. Add 5 rpm every 5 minutes until you reach 100 rpm. Then decrease rpm by 5 every 5 minutes.

- Cultivate your ability to remain relaxed, and become more aware of your breath having an effect on this experience. As Angie says, ‘Enjoy the scrubbing bubbles!’.***

- Warm down…… stretch……aaaaah……

Training stress is like squeezing out a sponge. Active recovery allows that sponge to return to it’s original form, although, unlike the sponge, you’ll be even greater than before!

Danielle Foster

***"You know the commercial where the scrubbing bubbles go down the drain and clean out the pipes? I always refer to active recovery as 'it's like the scrubbing bubbles, cleaning out the pipes'". --Angie Sturtevant