How many consecutive days/rest?

[54ny77]

I'm usually about 2 years on and 5 years off, give or take.

When off I strive to eat and drink plenty of the wrong things , and lots of it.

Gotta have balance.

[NHAero]

Just to clarify, since I posted about the 58 day streak, I am most emphatically NOT training. My average mileage for those days is 24/day, and there are some where I'm riding to the PO or grocery store and even a friend's house, all under 10 miles, not even in riding kit, just out for a short ride or as an alternative to driving a motor vehicle.

[Bob Ross]

I'll agree with everyone who's said It's Hard To Generalize but for me, more than 2 consecutive days is too many*. Depending on how many consecutive days I rode, the correct # of consecutive days to rest/recover is almost always either 1 or 2. 0 is just stupid.

* once a year ...sometimes twice ...I'll take an entire week off the bike. Hard to tell if that really helps my performance, but it definitely doesn't hurt my performance. And it does a lot to invigorate my enthusiasm for the sport.

[benb]

Riding to the PO or grocery store can easily count as "recovery" if you're actually good at riding slow when you're supposed to.

I've always had recovery days baked in. I was very good about reading training/coaching books early.

My issue is longer term.. I have found it easy to burn the candle a bit too much over 4-5 months which impacts later in the season. I am *very* bad at this and it was very very hard to get that right when I was in a club.

Most training regimes have a built in mid-season break for this too. It's really critical to get the rest right.

I'd honestly say I never disciplined myself fully to do a proper recovery ride till I had a PM and really started to understand what "easy" means. I would not be surprised as others said if a lot of amateur riders are in that constantly overtrained state where they are never capable of working their hardest when they really do need to go hard.

But if I'm not actually training for some goal I am not going for recovery rides.. waste of time for everyday people who are time crunched. I'll take the day off the bike instead. A walk or something else can be active recovery.

[Tandem Rider]

You get stronger not by riding hard, but by recovering from riding hard. I had this drilled into my thick skull in the '80s when I spent a summer training with a guy from the National Team. Hard days had me crying, go home and eat plain rice because that was all I could manage kind of hard. The easy days were so easy I sometimes thought I would tip over, no hills, easy gears, only ride for an hour. I thought to myself "how can this work", I had my single biggest improvement that year.

As far as how much rest and how many rest days and when to take them is an individual question. It all depends on you. Monitoring how you honestly feel, weight, hydration, external stress, possibly resting heart rate etc will go a long ways towards helping you think about it. Note, this will require keeping a training diary or log with notes.

[flying]

Now that I'm older (63) I ride much more than ever before but, I ride
an easier pace. I tend to go at least 7 days then maybe 1 off but no hard set rules.

If I do a 50+ mile with more than 3000 climbing I will ride next day but more of a recovery spinning.

It is funny but as I got older active recovery works better for me. Full day off the bike will have me pretty tight when I get back on the day after rest even though I stretch etc on days off.

As others have said you need to find what works for you specifically

When I was young & doing tri I used a simple gauge to determine my need for rest

I would take a waking pulse as soon as I woke before moving much in bed. Then stand & take a standing pulse. If the difference is much more than usual I would take a day to rest as body was still tired/recovering.

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by Tandem Rider

Hard days had me crying, go home and eat plain rice because that was all I could manage kind of hard. The easy days were so easy I sometimes thought I would tip over, no hills, easy gears, only ride for an hour.

Best training advice I ever heard: "Most cyclists' hard days aren't hard enough, and their easy days aren't easy enough."

[isaacneff]

As others have said, its seems to me it comes down to goals. If you’re trying to improve, hard days are hard, easy days are very easy and rest is key.
But if you’re just having fun, keep riding!
I personally do train seriously for racing and for me each week is different. I do usually take a day off any “real” riding very few weeks. Although even those days I often pedal easy the 2.4mi to and from work.