Managing Fatigue, Part 2
This will give you some ideas on how to implement what we learned in Part 1, in the real world. We will start with the macro view and move onto the micro view.
On an annual basis, I think most younger juniors should shoot for a one or two week break from the bike at the end of the season, completely off the bike. I would try to schedule in a few breaks during the year also. Say one at the end of the summer or maybe the first week you go back to school, just take a week off. Then maybe you miss 5 days for a family vacation during Christmas break and miss another 5 days during spring break to go visit your grandma back in Texas. Defining these in advance allows you to plan your training and racing accordingly and allows you to have small breaks to look forward to, it’s good for your head and when the break comes you will feel ok with missing the time on the bike as you had your training planned to do this – maybe you ended a big block of training the week before and this rest will be a perfect way to freshen up your legs and brain before you transition to a block of intense training for your final lead up to road nationals. Don’t be afraid to take some rest, on an annual view this is healthy and just realistic.
On an even larger macro view you will see some older guys (like me) take full seasons off racing, maybe make a comeback at age 50 and race for 3 years and then take 2 years off racing (just riding for fun) and then do another few years of racing at 55. These breaks keep older guys motivated as well as allow them years to do stuff like hip surgeries or 3 week cruises with their wives. It’s rare you see a guy grind out 40 years straight of bike racing, and when you do, they generally are not very good.
Moving on to a medium view, on a monthly basis, you may want to build in a few days to rest/recover every 4-6 weeks. Again, if you have finals at school or a family vacation, try to use these as a time to take a recovery break and flush out any lingering fatigue. If I am doing a 6-8 week block of early season endurance, I like to do a 5-day transition between this and my next block of power or more intense training. For me this may be Monday through Friday coffee rides, maybe on Wednesday I do a 50-mile ride with a 20-minute climb, but I will do the climb at a talking pace. Sometimes these are nice breaks to look forward to when you are training hard, sometimes you may do this after a big goal you have been training for. Maybe you spent 3 months training for Valley of the Sun then the week after you just chill and do coffee rides and maybe take an extra day off the bike, catch up on some homework.
On a micro view, during your training week, scheduling your workouts is crucial. Most people have their free time on Saturday/Sunday and want to do big rides then as it is when they have the time. But if you are racing on Sunday, do you want to really do a big ride the day before? I don’t. Maybe when I am far out from a big event I would do this for a bit, to overload my body, but not as I get closer to an event. Honestly, at my age (and I was like this when I was younger also) I like to go to every race to try to win, and prefer to have my legs feel good and perform at their best.
When I am planning out my workouts for the week, I like to be proactive in managing my fatigue and not reactive. I don’t want to be, “I hope I am recovered enough from yesterday to ride ok today”. I want to look at the workout(s) I am going to focus on, the intense ones that are most closely related to the event I am training for and try to go into those with the least amount of fatigue practical, so I can maximize my gains from that workout.
Instead of doing a workout and being tired, and “hoping” you recover for your next one, you should plan out your weeks so that you know you will go into your key workouts with a certain amount of recovery.
Think of this scenario where you have Monday through Friday to do some workouts (assume you are racing on Sunday and doing a pre-race opener ride on Saturday).
Monday: rest
Tuesday: train
Wednesday : train
Thursday: train
Friday: rest
In this case, you had 5 days and did 3 workouts with 2 days of rest. Likely by Thursday your training would be a bit compromised as you had some built up fatigue, for sure you would want to either do Wednesday or Thursday as a lower intensity endurance day and Tuesday as your more intense workout as you had a full recovery day on Monday.
Let’s look at another option, my personal preferred option:
Monday: rest
Tuesday: am workout/pm workout (9 hours rest between)
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: am workout/pm workout (9 hours rest between)
Friday: rest
In this case, you had 5 days and did 4 workouts and had 3 full days of rest. So as opposed to the previous scenario, this plan gave you an extra full day of recovery and one additional workout. The more days off you get, the more time you have to do other stuff like work, school or social activities off the bike – this is good for morale, and recovery. For the rest days i recommend taking at least one day completely OFF the bike, this is great for the head and the body needs to learn how to have a day completely off, when you travel to a race you will have full days off, your body needs to be used to this. Other rest days, I would do an hour easy on the road or 30 minutes on the trainer/rollers.
Doing two workouts per day can allow you to do more workouts at a higher quality, if you can manage to take a nap in between it is even better! Say you took the workout you did on Tuesday in the first scenario and split it in two, half in the morning and half at night, you would likely do the second half of the workout at a much higher quality if you had 9 hours of recovery in the middle. I would generally do two different workouts when I do you a double day, though. I prefer to do two workouts that are fairly different.. For me, this may look like one hour on the trainer in the morning doing 30 seconds on/30 seconds off 10 times, a few sets. Then at night I would go to the track or maybe a training crit. The key here is to plan rest into your week ahead of your workouts, not after. Think about the workouts you want to do at the highest quality and plan to go into them a bit fresher. If your plan has a 4-hour endurance ride in it, you know you can go into that with a bit more fatigue as the intensity is lower. If you have a track race on the plan, or a high intensity track session, you would likely not want to do your 4-hour endurance ride the day before.
If I were not in the racing season, or there was no Sunday race, I would contemplate doing a double on Tuesday and just a single workout on Thursday. This would allow me to go into Saturday with more in my legs, assuming I can do a big workout on Saturday without a race on Sunday. This would be proactively laying out my training week and not reactively going into Saturday tired and inducing a sub par workout. Prioritize your workouts that have the possibility to induce the largest gains.
Your body likes variety. When you provide a new training stimulus, say a specific ride/workout, you will improve for a few weeks in a row, but then you will notice you stop improving or even slip a bit. Your body senses the shock of a trauma you induce (say you start doing 30/30 intervals) and builds back stronger to try to combat the trauma. Your body says “that hurt, I better reinforce myself, so I don’t break” – but after a few weeks it has built itself up and becomes satisfied with the improvements. This is why we rotate workouts and training phases. You may do 30/30 intervals and improve for two weeks, then switch to 1 minute on 1 minute off and improve for two weeks. And amazingly, when you go back to the 30/30’s you will be as good or better than when you stopped. Your body forgot about the 30/30’s and wants to rebuild from the trauma of them once again. This rotating of workouts is basic periodization. Besides being the better way to improve physiologically, it is good for your head – doing the exact same hard workout every week is mentally fatiguing. If your brain is not stimulated, then your body will not push/improve as much.
Imagine if we went to the track and did 1 lap on, 3 laps off (common workout). Now imagine if you went to the track and did that same workout every week, for a few months. You think you would still be trying at 100% during the workout? Or you think you would figure out how to make it a bit easier on yourself. Actually, do you think you would even show up to do it?
Your body needs variety to improve, and your brain does as well.
Most people like to have a weekly program, do the same thing every week, but this simply is not the way to improve. Workouts need to rotate to induce the best improvements, and workouts need to rotate their focus through the season and training phase.
Below is a sample 8-week block I might use as the build up to an event. An 8-week cycle like this is something you would rinse and repeat over and over with some adjustments.
| Week | Focus | Example focus workout |
| 1 | endurance | 4-hour road ride |
| 2 | threshold | 2 x 20m @ FTP |
| 3 | threshold | 30/30 trainer intervals |
| 4 | power | 1m hill intervals |
| 5 | power | 30s/1m trainer intervals |
| 6 | speed | Track (motor intervals) |
| 7 | speed/race | Some jumps, race! |
| 8 | transition/recover | Coffee rides/ 1 group ride |