A Bit of Recovery

Monday Morning on LSD

I was drifting off the back of the strung-out single paceline of the Saturday northshore ride, thinking to myself, "I think I'm going to need some serious recovery time next week" as we rolled down Lee Road toward 1072. I had been struggling with the pace, which admittedly was quite high, from the start and was pretty sure I knew why. 

A solid month

My last day off the bike had been the first weekend in June when I was officiating the Tour de La, and since then had done a number of fast training rides back-to-back. Everyone says that as you get older you need more recovery time, and although I think that advice sometimes gets blown a little bit out of proportion, it's not entirely untrue. Saturday's "Pine Loop" ride was just shy of 60 miles, but with it starting at the Lee Road playground I knew it would be all rolling hills. I also knew it would be fast. That's just the kind of ride I wanted, even though the little Strava voice in my head kept whispering something about accumulated stress. It didn't take long for the pace to ramp up once we turned onto Lee Road from Tung and Peyton went to the front. Somehow I found myself on his wheel as the speed settled around the 27 mph along the slight uphill drag toward the Firetower. The whole time I could see my heartrate, which had been a little high from the start, creeping upward despite my best efforts to exploit whatever slim draft all 115 pounds of 16-year-old Peyton, decked out in his national championship jersey, was providing. As we approached the long downhill to the Bogue Chitto I figured it might be a good time to pull over and seek some better shelter at the back of the 7 or 8-rider string behind us. My timing couldn't have been worse. With my Check Engine light already flashing red, the paceline hit the downhill just as I was dropping back, streaming past about five mph faster than I was going, and despite ramping it up to 34 mph I never caught any of the draft that I so desperately needed. I backed off to recover a bit, hoping that the group would pause at the intersection in Enon long enough for me to rejoin it. As the road flattened out I saw Peyton dropping back to pick me up and pace me back to the group, which was nice.

Up by Pine we did a nice short loop that I hadn't done in a long time. It wasn't quite as hilly as I remembered it, so I think we probably used to go a little farther before coming back into Pine back in the day. I remember one race that we put on that started around Pine. It was back in the early 70s and must have been in the middle of the summer because it was super hot that day. This was before feed zones and electrolytes and big water bottles, and it was probably supposed to be 80 miles or so, which was typical back then. I say "supposed to be" because what was left of the lead group made a decision to unilaterally shorten the race by one lap. The people at the finish line were a little surprised when we sprinted for the finish when they fully expected us to be doing another lap. Anyway, I digress....

OK, OK, I get it.

So I was still hanging on after we stopped at the store in Pine and headed back toward Enon and was feeling OK but was still not quite firing on all cylinders despite skipping pulls and generally trying to limit my efforts. Not far from 1072 on Lee Road there's a little hill near the church where I came off the back, again. Fortunately MJ turned around and paced me back the last mile or so to where everyone was waiting at 1072. Under the circumstances I was fully expecting to be riding alone by the time I was halfway up the firetower climb, but as it turned out everyone just rode that at a nice steady tempo, so at least we rolled back into the parking lot together. 

I figured the Sunday Giro wouldn't get too crazy. With the Seabrook bridge still out, the ride doesn't get a nice long stretch of road without intersections until we get to Almonaster, and between the heat and the alternate route the group size has been smaller than usual anyway. For me, this ride was an exercise in wheelsucking and energy conservation. I had already decided that my next couple of rides, at least, would be strictly Zone two-ish even if that meant, which I knew it would, dropping off the back at times to enforce the recovery goal. There were only a few people on the ride who were pushing the pace, so in general it was a pretty easy Giro, which worked out perfectly for me.

Checking Strava later that day I realized how long it had been since I'd taken a day off the bike, and then when I looked at what Strava calls my weekly "Relative Effort" the screen was red and included the word "historic." 

So with that confirmation of my own gut feeling I went out to the Mellow Monday ride on my old Cervelo with strict self-instructions to keep the pedal pressure light no matter what. When the speed ramped up on the way back down Lakeshore Drive I slipped off the back and spun in the rest of the way to Canal Blvd. before getting back into the group. It wasn't quite the "active recovery" it should have been, but close enough I guess. Actually, my legs felt fine, so apparently Sunday hadn't inflicted any discernable additional damage. Still, I knew I should take at least one more day easy, so I went out to the Tuesday levee ride with a plan to take only short pulls and to drop off the back somewhere on the way out to soft-pedal for a few miles before turning around and latching back onto the group on its way back. The "group" turned out to be just three of us after the usual suspects turned back at Williams Blvd., but fortunately neither Martin or Charles was pushing the pace much, so I was able to keep my efforts under control, pulling off from the front once my heart rate nudged above 130 bpm and watching it drop back down to around 110 in the draft. 

I guess I'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow morning and then play the WeMoRi by ear.