It seems the more I train the more my body needs to train. It's like a drug and when I don't do it, my body actually feels like it goes through withdrawals. This week I decided to try a real "recovery" week. I took Monday completely off. On Tuesday I swam 3k and rode on my trainer for 45 minutes very easily. By Wednesday morning I noticed my body was not happy. I decided to a run a try. Wow, that felt horrible. My legs felt really tight, my stride was very short and my HR would not climb. In general I just felt like crap. By the end of the workout I swore all this recovery stuff off. Thursday I did a 3k swim in the morning and a 55 minute run in the afternoon. I was feeling a little bit better but still not great. On Friday the weather was going to be good enough to ride in the afternoon. I went for a short swim in the morning and then took off to work since the sooner I get there, the sooner I can leave. I even took an hour PTO to get out on my bike early. The wind was horrible and cold. I had on some very un aero clothes and it was pretty unfortable to ride aero on the bike so I spent a decent amount of time sitting up. The power data is ok not great but for the 2nd outdoor ride of the year it's not bad. I think I averaged about 3.25w/kg but average speed was way down due to the wind. It wasn't really meant to be a hard ride anyway. So usually on Saturday's I do all 3. Well since this week was a recovery week, I decided to just go for a run. I finally started to feel better. I ran in the trails that I have been XC skiing on all winter and now were for the most part clear and no snow. They were still a little bit muddy though. So I moved out to the road for the 2nd half. I ended up doing about 10 miles. Something weird happened to my Garmin though. The elevation is weird. You can see it here. It's a hilly course but I didnt climb 1300ft in 1 mile. So today, I decided to just do a straight ride on the trainer. Man I hate the trainer. I have a really nice one (CycleOps Super Magneto Pro) but I still hate it. I am so bored. I was going to ride outside but it wasnt even over 30 when I was going to ride. I might be from Michigan but I hate feeling cold. I love the heat. I love the feeling of sweat poring down my face and the heat feeling like an oven. I can't even barely ride my trainer with the fan on me in my face. I get these strange chills and I would rather sweat all over the place than feel that.
Long story short, I am not a fan of recovery weeks and I think my body agree's. I've heard for some athletes this is pretty common to actually feel worse than better when they take a day off. I'd rather do a recovery ride than take a whole day off. I think I recover better from doing that than taking a whole day off. So back to two-a-days five days a week and 2 big weekend workouts tomorrow, and very happily I might add.
