Cycling, walking and rest days.

bjdw_1977

I ride five days a week, four short training rides Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and one long ride on Sunday. Monday (today) is supposed to be a rest day.

Is it okay to take the dog on a longish (10-12km) hilly walk on my rest days, or am I buggering up my recovery time for my cycling muscles?

sarabushby

Give it a go and see how your body responds. Active recovery can be good and actually help by flushing more blood through your muscles. But if you feel like your legs are tired and heavy for your next bike, more so than normal, then don’t do it next wk.
It might also depend on the type of training rides, does it matter if you have tired legs? Is it group training? Intervals? Tempo efforts? Hill climbs? What are you training for? Sometimes it’s good practice to train on tired legs.

bjdw_1977

sarabushby wrote: »

Give it a go and see how your body responds. Active recovery can be good and actually help by flushing more blood through your muscles. But if you feel like your legs are tired and heavy for your next bike, more so than normal, then don’t do it next wk.
It might also depend on the type of training rides, does it matter if you have tired legs? Is it group training? Intervals? Tempo efforts? Hill climbs? What are you training for? Sometimes it’s good practice to train on tired legs.

Yesterdays ride was a three hour group ride with a couple of decent hills. My mid week short rides are a mixture of hill repeats, intervals and pace riding. My legs were feeling pretty heavy last night but not too bad this morning so I guess the dog gets her walkies.

jlklem

I ride a ton and like to walk in the evening to help with recovery. But after about 45 minutes even slow and flat I know I am doing about all I need. 10 km would impact recovery for me. I might be ok the next day but since you stack rides like I do I bet it will catch up to you.

What’s you’re Strava feed called?

bjdw_1977

jlklem wrote: »

I ride a ton and like to walk in the evening to help with recovery. But after about 45 minutes even slow and flat I know I am doing about all I need. 10 km would impact recovery for me. I might be ok the next day but since you stack rides like I do I bet it will catch up to you.

What’s you’re Strava feed called?

https://www.strava.com/activities/2305895123

Feel free to follow and I will do the same. Cheers.

jlklem

Cool...done...I go by Angry Minnow on Strava

summpear

I do active recovery but not quite that active. An easy to moderate yoga class and then a couple miles brisk walking - maybe 5k tops. But I don't train as strenuously as you do, so our heavy/recovery days are going to look different.

lorrpb

If your already doing tbecwslks, how dies it feel? How are you recovering? If you’re not already walking that far in recovery days, consider starting with 3-5k, see how that affects you, then build from there.

NorthCascades

I like walking and hiking, so I do them. As a cyclist; I drove my bike to the mountains today and rode for hours. I try not to walk too many hills on rest days, my legs will tell me when over had enough.

I'm not training for anything specific on the bike. If I were, that might change my answer ... but not by that much.