The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Coach Adam Pulford delivers actionable training advice and answers your questions in short weekly episodes for time-crunched cyclists looking to improve their cycling performance. The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast (formerly The TrainRight Podcast) is brought to you by the team at CTS - the leading endurance coaching company since 2000. Coach Adam pulls from over a decade of coaching experience and the collective knowledge of over 50+ CTS Coaches to help you cut throught the noise of training information and implement proven training strategies that’ll take your performance to the next level.
The Time-Crunched Cyclist Podcast by CTS
Episode 211: Optimizing Recovery After Big Goal Events
OVERVIEW
Overview: Big goal events take a lot of you, both physically and mentally. A couple days off won't cut it. Here's how to structure an effective post-goal event recovery.
TOPICS COVERED
- How to start post-event recovery
- Week 2 of post-event recovery
- Week 3 of post-event recovery
- How you know you're ready again
- Question 2: Key Metrics to Track for Training?
- 3 broad areas to focus on
- Specific metrics to track
ASK A QUESTION FOR A FUTURE PODCAST
HOST
Adam Pulford has been a CTS Coach for nearly two decades and holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology. He's participated in and coached hundreds of athletes for endurance events all around the world.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or on your favorite podcast platform
GET FREE TRAINING CONTENT
Join our weekly newsletter
CONNECT WITH CTS
Website: trainright.com
Instagram: @cts_trainright
Twitter: @trainright
Facebook: @CTSAthlete
From the team at CTS. This is the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast, our show dedicated to answering your training questions and providing actionable advice to help you improve your performance even if you're strapped for time. I'm your host, coach Adam Pulford, and I'm one of the over 50 professional coaches who make up the team at CTS. In each episode, I draw on our team's collective knowledge, other coaches and experts in the field to provide you with the practical ways to get the most out of your training and ultimately become the best cyclist that you can be. Now on to our show. Now on to our show. Welcome back, time Crunch fans.
Speaker 1:Before we get into today's show, I just want to give a shout out to the US Junior Women's 17-18 year old team that's racing at the Watersley Ladies Challenge this weekend Lydia Cusack, alyssa Sarkisoff, georgia Bond and Bridget Siambati good luck, go fast and rip it up. I had a privilege of working with these girls about a month ago in Spain at another Nations Cup race and a training camp. I learned a ton about each of these riders and I would definitely remember their names. Give them a follow, because they're going places. Anyway, shout out to them. Good luck this weekend and as well as a world championships coming up here at the end of September, which they'll be at.
Speaker 1:Okay, now let's get to some more athlete questions that you have all been writing in with, many of which stacked up during my time in Spain. So I'm doing my best to answer as much of these questions as I can before I get on to some other interviews. Today. I'll answer two of them, but let's start first with a good question about what to do for recovery after a big race. All right, here is the original question.
Speaker 1:I'm wondering what advice you can give about on a timeline for getting back to training and what type of training to start with after a big event that I pushed way beyond a normal training week. I just finished a 50K mountain bike race with lots of climbing and nasty mud that pushed me to my limits. I've been training hard for this one this year, but this ride was about three to four times the length of my longest workout has been. I paced myself to finish strong, but pushed as hard as I could for that duration. I'm wondering whether and how I can use the stress of this event to develop even better fitness down the road. I know not to rush back into hard training right away. I tried that last year, uh, after this event, and it didn't end up well. But I'm wondering what advice you have for me and other athletes in this situation.
Speaker 1:I love the podcast and thanks for the advice, steve. Thanks, steve, and thank you for listening. Um, yeah, you're, you're spot on're, spot on with, kind of where you're at, and that's where I'm going to start. Step one is don't rush it. Okay, I think many endurance athletes and type A personalities which gravitate toward endurance racing they want to get back to training as soon as possible after a big event when what is actually needed is that rest and recovery, both physically and mentally. So my advice is not so much a data-driven approach with some fancy metric to tell you when you are ready, but rather go slow, be patient and tune into yourself. And now step two is have a recovery plan. Just like in training, where a plan is handy for achieving your goals, recovery is really similar. In this way, it'll provide a roadmap where you'll still have to tune into yourself and tweak and adjust it along the way, but having a plan is definitely better than no plan at all.
Speaker 1:Now, I also said that there's no algorithm to predict this optimal human recovery, and much of this depends on so many factors, including how big the stress of the race was relative to how big of stresses that you're used to, which you already made a nod to right. It also relates to the fitness leading into your race. Was it low or high, relatively speaking, your freshness leading in. Sometimes athletes will go in way less fresh than they should and that means that the recovery on the backside is even greater. Fueling during the event can play a huge factor, depending on how depleted you come out from it. Then you have environmental factors like heat, humidity and altitude that can cause more stress during the race itself. You also have travel stresses that happen along the way and then other normal life stresses when you get back to work, back to family and all this stuff that real life has to offer. I also see kind of a depression that can hit with some athletes after big events like this, and although we don't want this or want this to last too long, I find it normal for those doing bucket list type events or putting a lot of emotion into a big race, where there's this letdown after the event is completed. So, with all of those considerations, let me give you my best advice for recovery plan after a major, stressful, a priority race.
Speaker 1:Where to start week number one? Take a week off the bike. Yeah, a full week off with no bikes sounds a little bonkers, doesn't it? But you'll survive, don't worry. Take the first two to three days of that first week with full rest and then start to add in some active recovery time. Moving your body is still good during this time. Things like short hikes, walking, yoga if that's in your practice or light strength training are all good options. We want short sessions though, like 30 to 60 minutes tops. Rpe is low, nothing above a four or five out of 10.
Speaker 1:And tune into key signs during this time period. Okay, signs of deep fatigue are low energy, heavy legs, general malaise about life. It's normal. Okay, all normal after a big event. Don't freak out if you're feeling that way. Okay, all normal after a big event. Don't freak out if you're feeling that way. Sleep may be disturbed for a few days, but then it should be coming back to normal after that two to three days off. Getting your sleep habits and your sleep cycle back to normal is probably the most important thing in this first week. Training habits are not.
Speaker 1:Often I find athletes craving the routine of training even though they're not fully recovered yet, and so light movement can scratch the itch of doing something while also still giving you the benefits of staying in recovery mode. Week number two is when you want to start riding a bit, but nothing crazy. What I mean by that is easy rides like recovery zone one or low zone two rides are all good options here. Hiking, yoga and light strength work are great options as well for changing it up and just kind of um changing your routine, adding some variety. If the bike feels a little daunting, okay, start to look for signs of increased motivation for exercise and movement. Legs will start to ideally not be as heavy as they were in week number one and you want to maybe do some efforts again, harder efforts above the five out of six. You're like wanting that physically but not mentally. Right, but don't do them yet. Okay, keep the intensity low, even in week two.
Speaker 1:Cultivating a high awareness in yourself is really critical to being a great athlete. I'm always working on this with my athletes, and it's the number one thing that will help you, the athlete, to make good decisions on the fly and when following a training program. This goes for the conservative decisions like going easier or resting if you're feeling really bad on the day or crushing it If high intensity is the goal of the training program and you're feeling really good on the day. I give my athletes this lateral or autonomy in their training program and I try to always communicate that as best I can. And that's what I would encourage you to do during these couple of weeks. Here is really cultivate awareness. If you haven't already or it's just to be automatic, you should be always trying to be more aware of your body and your feeling and your energy as you're going, especially in recovery mode. Now week number three. This is where I would test the waters a bit. Okay, so this is part of that recovery game plan and we're now into the third week.
Speaker 1:If motivation is coming back and the body is feeling normal, which that's a realistic approach from that timeline after a big stress Really it is a couple of weeks, I find with most athletes If that motivation is coming back, you want to do a test workout like a group ride If you're normally doing group ride once a week or twice a week, you can jump back in or a hard threshold workout such as three by 12 minutes at 91 to 105% of FTP, with five to six minute recovery in between. Now this workout will be enough intensity and time at intensity for you to know with good confidence If your legs, heart, lungs and head are coming back into the game. Notice I gave a pretty good range. It's really the zone four range, low and top end 91 to 105%. I give a bigger range like that for the athlete to choose how they're feeling. If I was right in the training program I would say start at 91% for the first effort and if you're feeling good you can go up to the middle. So 9,500% of FTP for the second effort and then, if you're feeling really, really good, still go up to 105% on the third effort. That would be a progressive or that would be a logical way that I would want an athlete to do that on a test workout like this. What we're looking for here is RPE to be somewhere between seven to eight out of 10 and heart rate to be within a normal range and maybe, maybe a touch higher than zone four threshold heart rate range. More on this in a minute, because it can be a little higher and we want power obviously to be in the range. If you can't complete the workout or if you're getting dropped in the group ride, where you normally don't, it's a good sign that something is still off and I would encourage more recovery time.
Speaker 1:The one thing I would say before doing this hard quote test day back is to do some openers the day before. Openers can vary athlete to athlete and coach to coach, but what I mean by this is incorporating three or four strong efforts that are somewhere between 20 and 30 seconds each and they feel like a nine out of 10. So they're not maximum efforts, but they're hard efforts. Usually that's anaerobic capacity power. Okay. So above zone six, you want to take two to three minute recovery in between each of these short hard efforts, and then that's at a minimum. What you can also do is just pepper them in along your ride in endurance ride where you actually push a little bit of tempo and maybe short periods of low threshold work and you're getting all the systems going again Okay. So kind of like a mix of all the zones and especially popping in those short sub max effort sprints. That's a good opener day before a hard workout like this. Efforts like this spike lactate heart rate and regulate the anaerobic glycolytic systems and I find that the RPE will then be more normal the next day for that hard effort. I think anyone can relate to this.
Speaker 1:When you take two weeks off, for whatever reason it could be, after a big race like this, or life gets in the way, you know, work gets in the way and you just two weeks of not training or just irregular training, just irregular training, and then you jump back into the training program where you jump back into the group ride uh, for the first time back, and it's the first time you've had intensity for two weeks. You know you're setting heart rate records on training, peaks, rpes through the roof and you're like, oh my gosh, I've lost everything in the way of fitness. Okay, that's not true. We know that the decay of fitness and performance is not that acute, even though it feels that way. Now I'm guilty of it, just as many listeners probably are where you just jump back into training because you want to go again and that's one strategy. It's probably not the best strategy.
Speaker 1:Recovery periods and then coming back to intensity quickly happens for a number of reasons, including acute changes from endurance training, like plasma volume being a bit lower. It's the watery portion of your blood. That helps circulate your, your, your blood through your body and the excitability of your heart and muscles. So if your plasma volume, or the liquidy part, is not as high, your, your blood's going to be a little thicker, so it's harder to move through your body. So your heart has to work harder to get oxygenated blood to the working muscles. That's, that's one of the reasons. Also, you're not cooling yourself as much because you don't have that plasma volume, so you get hotter quicker. Rpe goes up. Also there's excitability some complicated stuff with excitability, the nerve and muscle interactions. I'm not going to cover that there. All I'm going to say is that it will regulate quickly once you've done a few efforts after a recovery period like that. So when you experience this after a time away and then you come back, don't freak out. You haven't lost everything. It's a very normal process. So before smashing that first hard workout, regulate your body with some upper endurance work and these openers like I described. I think your assessment will be much more accurate after a big recovery period from your biggest race of the year. I hope that helps answer your question, steve, and I hope that helps listeners plan their recovery blocks more appropriately in the years to come.
Speaker 1:Okay, now let's move on to the second question for today. Here we go, the original question as it was written in. As a 61 year old cyclist at steady training load of 10 to 15 hours per week, I'm wondering what metrics to prioritize Strava's WAP, which is weighted average power, uh, and he lists his of 170 to 175, uh Watts and his average heart rate and his average cadence of 80 to 80, 80 to 83, um, are all stuff that he's tracking. For more context, I can hold these over two to six hours and that's my happy place, and I have a peak heart rate of one, 45 before the legs start chirping. However, as I consider stepping it up part based on your recent podcast with Charlie, I'm thinking that this metric to focus on is moving cadence, 83 at a minimum and then 85 toward 90 RPMs without losing power.
Speaker 1:The timing of this podcast series was well-timed with my decision to step up to it, and that's coming from Ken and he's referring to an episode. I'll get into it as well. But 183 and 184, it was a little two-part podcast series and I'll reference that here coming up. But yes, ken, thanks for listening to the podcast. I'm getting to this one a little late and glad you enjoyed the little series with CTS coach Charlie Livermore, straight to the point, working on higher cadence and going from like 83 to 85 and getting closer to 90 RPMs, especially in your zone. Two endurance cruises with no RPE change. That's a good thing. So you know, take some of the lessons from that episode, which was entitled the science of a great pedal stroke, and that was episode number 183, and apply them to your training rides. You'll have a lot of great success.
Speaker 1:However, to your inquiry about which metrics to prioritize for overall training, I want to answer that and bring some context to it. Strava is a fun social media tool and has some great, unique metrics for training and historical assessments. Okay, but weighted average power WAP is nothing that I ever look at for my athletes, including weighted average power, average heart rate and average cadence. Not any one of those things is something that I focus on. It's multiple things together that I monitor to increase performance.
Speaker 1:Now, as Charlie and I talked about in our cadence episodes, having the athlete self-select the cadence for hard efforts, which are zone three and above, is actually really important and the best way to improve performance so long as we are somewhere in the 80 to 100 RPM genre of things. Okay, so that is a key thing to pull out from one of those episodes, and it's not to say that higher cadence is always better. Okay, self-selected cadence for high intensity, as long as we're 80 to a hundred, that's the ballpark advice that I'm going to give you. Okay, now, working to improve slightly higher cadence, like I said, on those cruising endurance rides, that's. That's, that's good. And also high intensity with high cadence, something that we really got into. Um, on the episode episode. In fact, I'm going to mention the second episode here too, which is best workouts to improve pedal stroke, and that's episode number 184. Okay, If you want to learn all about cadence and workouts, to do that for any listeners who didn't catch it, definitely go back and listen to those, because that's what we're talking about here, and listen to those because that's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1:Now back to the metrics and what to focus on. Ken, in my coaching practice, I focus on these three elements energy system development, increased performance, which is mean max power, durations and getting on podium and optimizing the fun factor. Okay, so with energy system development, I'm talking about the aerobic, the glycolytic and the ATP systems, to be very overly generalized, did a podcast about this two or three episodes ago where I talk at length about these three energy systems, or all the energy systems. But I'm always keeping the aspects of the underlying physiology in mind when I'm coaching, and I encourage you to do that too Short-term, medium-term, long-term, in other words, and the efforts associated with it.
Speaker 1:Increased performance With my athletes. If I'm increasing their performance, I am doing my job as a coach. Now, that's not to say that every month performance will increase or their mean max power will increase in the way that I have defined some of this. Okay, there's give and take, there are plateaus, but in general, a zigzag, upward trend of performance, of power durations or increased performances at races. That's what I'm looking for, okay, short-term, long-term and that has some implications before, and I encourage you to can in our listeners to think in that way.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, keeping it super fun. Fun is fast, fast, as fun, as many people have heard. We need to take all of the fitness and all of the power development and bring it together to produce speed. That's really what we're trying to do. On a bicycle, even if you don't race or you don't do events, seeing your cruising. Speed go up is super fun. Okay, just on your local courses, on your local rides, even if you see that speed increase in Watopia. Right, it's fun to go fast. Plus, I've never coached an athlete who covered a distance faster than they did before and they were sad about it. So going fast is fun and I try to get my athletes to go fast.
Speaker 1:Now. I do this by tracking and implementing FTP, frc, tte and PMax. I've covered this on previous episodes before, but that I'm just going to label that as like point number one in the way of what I'm tracking. Number two is I designed training programs to bring out more aerobic or anaerobic at key time periods when needed. The third thing is I balance fun with hard work to make sure that athletes are getting their recovery. Okay, now for you can and for self-coached athletes, what I would prioritize because some of this stuff that I'm using is I'm using a little bit more sophisticated tools with WKO5. I have my own, like call it, proprietary methods of doing that in the way of what I'm looking at and um and and how I implement. Okay, but for the self-coached athletes, here's stuff that is on training peaks, that is on intervalsicu, that's on today's plan that you can do in a spreadsheet. This is what I'd recommend.
Speaker 1:You want to track key power durations. 20 minutes, first and foremost. This is easy to track and you can set training zones from it. Lazy man's approach for that is to do a 20 minute max effort. Take 95% of that, put that as your FTP and training peaks and then use the CTS calculator on training peaks to create training zones. Okay, so the 20 minute power is really important. Track that and if that keeps going up over time, you're doing great. Okay.
Speaker 1:40 to 60 minute peak powers is also really helpful to track. This gives insights on FTP and TTE, or time to exhaustion, which is how long you can hold FTP. Think about it there's extensive functional threshold power and there's intensive functional threshold power. Those time periods are 8 to 10 minutes and then outwards of 40 to 60 minutes. So catching the tail end of that FTP of 40, 60 minutes. If you're 40, 60 minute, uh mean max powers or highest average powers are going up. Thumbs up. You're improving or increasing your performance. Five minute power tracking super important because it gives insights on VO2 max and it's easy to track. It's short. One minute power gives insights on FRC easy to track. It's super short, it's repeatable, and peak sprint power. So really anything from the shortest capture of peak sprint power, say on training pieces, one second. I also track 20 second sprint power.
Speaker 1:You want to note your cadences on all of these power durations that I listed. It's easy if you're using some of these online software programs to house your data. But so long as we're somewhere in the 80 to 100 for most of them, you're all good. The one minute and maybe the peak sprint power we want those on the upper end of things, so 90 to 100 or even higher. And then also note the heart rate and the RPE for these power durations. Rate of perceived effort can be recorded in your comments section for each interval or you can record it as a general RPE on the day itself in training peaks.
Speaker 1:Important to note here that power, heart rate and RPE are the trio of performance, or as Dr Steven Seiler calls them, the holy trinity, and having all three of these brings the best context versus just one alone. And, ken, that's what I mean by. There's not just one metric, it's not just cadence to focus on if you want to improve, that should be a component of it but the rate of perceived effort, the power with it at different zones. That's really I mean. I'm probably over answering your question, but I think it's. I think it's so critical to to like go in that direction, because so many athletes get myopic about one thing and they get wrong. They just like overly focused and they, they, they're looking at the tree and they forget about the forest. Okay, and if you're looking at the forest, generally that's better for training. Sometimes you got to go down and see the tree too.
Speaker 1:So here's some more advice make a plan for yourself that builds fitness and fatigue for three to four weeks and then brings fatigue down for five, five or seven days. Really, what I'm talking about here is classic periodization of three to four week builds, or three to four week on and then one week off. For time crunched athletes I've mentioned on the podcast before. I don't take a full week of seven days. I can usually get it done four or five days. If their sleep cycle is under control, they're managing their stresses and things like that.
Speaker 1:What you want to do is follow the program but adjust when fatigue is higher than you want or life throws you some curve balls. It seems obvious, but many athletes they favor, follow the program at all costs and they end up more tired and injured, versus allowing some flexibility in the program. With my coaching practice, there's a lot of flexibility, but we need to be communicating along the way so they're not just kind of doing their own thing. Then it goes back to kind of overdoing it. But that flexibility is really critical with a good plan. Your season should have a focus of fitness building and specificity, like developing cadence, for example, but it should also have some unstructured times or periods where it's not as scripted and you do more of what you want when you want.
Speaker 1:Now, the longer I coach, the more I find value in communicating this to the athlete. I even plan in unplanned time of training. It sounds weird, but it works wonders for the brain, and then what goes good for the brain goes good for the body typically. So, ken, to kind of wrap everything up, there is, you know, think more broadly in the context of developing one of those aspects and never lose sight of the power and the rate of perceived effort, along with the cadence, when it comes to all these power durations. In the end, if you're improving your power durations, you will be improving your performance and you'll be improving your speed, which will improve the fun factor. All of those things together, I think you'll have a very successful training program. So that's it.
Speaker 1:That's our show for today. Be sure to come back next week for more actionable advice. If you have your own questions for me about all things endurance training, simply head over to trainrightcom backslash podcast. Click on, ask a training question, fill out the form and that gets sent directly to me. I get those questions and I do my best to answer it on future episodes. Thanks again for listening and keep those questions coming in. Thanks for joining us on the Time Crunch Cyclist podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. If you want even more actionable training advice, head over to trainrightcom backslash newsletter and subscribe to our free weekly publication. Each week you'll get in-depth training content that goes beyond what we cover here on the podcast. That'll help you take your training to the next level. That's all for now. Until next time, train hard, train smart, train right.
