When training to cycle a century it can often be difficult to know exactly what to do on your rest days.
Some people become almost addicted to training and can develop a form of guilt about taking a days rest.
In this article I will explain why rest days are a crucial part of your training and how correct recovery will make you a better rider.
Just how do we get fit? Exercising makes us fit.
Everyone knows this, or do they? Actually exercising stretches and stresses our muscles, creating small tears in the muscle fibres.
It is actually after we have stopped exercising and are resting that the muscle fibres knit together again, stronger and larger than before.
Know that we get fitter when we rest is crucial to ensuring you do not train too hard.
If you do not allow adequate recovery time in between workouts your muscles do not have time to repair themselves which can both increase the chance of an injury such as a pulled muscle and longer term can cause scarring in the muscle tissue.
Active Recovery The good news is that it is possible to recover and still exercise.
The first way is via a recovery ride.
This is where you ride at an extremely easy pace for no more than 70 minutes.
This gets the blood flowing and helps flush out waste products from your muscles.
The second way to active recovery is some form of cross training.
Maybe you could go to the gym and lift some weights jump on the ergo machine pretty much anything goes so long as you are using different muscle groups to your cycling workouts.