No, not the buttered kind. Or the millennial organic sourdough lathered in smashed avocado and feta kind (although I wouldn’t say no). The kind my legs are right now. After cycling every day for a month I continued on to reach 50 straight days in the saddle.
Now that might not sound like a lot to many people, but I almost always have a day or two off every week. Riding my bike (a mix of road, mountain and virtual) every day for fifty straight days I found that the fatigue slowly built up. I guess my easy rides were not quite easy enough? Most of the time I could just push through it and still ride reasonably hard. Come day 51 though and my body said “nope, sorry mate we’re not saddling up today!”
That’s fine. I don’t get paid to cycle. Oh wait. Maybe I do? A couple of my rides were livestreamed over Zoom for upcoming events on FulGaz! I was online riding the test event, while answering questions on FulGaz and chatting with entrants about the course, trainer settings and general race tips. You can see me in the top left…
It was actually a lot of fun! This weekend is the Virtual Revolve 24 Hour event and in a few weeks time the Virtual 24 Hour World Time Trial Championships is being held on FulGaz also (the real-life one was COVID cancelled). I’m certainly not going to be riding either event in it’s entirety, but I’ll jump on course and onto the Zoom commentary livestream to shout some encouragement from the trainer.
So after 50 days in the saddle did I learn anything else new? Mostly that I don’t need to ride every day and that not riding is actually okay too. I also noticed that I lost a lot of “top end” in the latter part of my cycling streak. I could still ride “fast” but hard sprints or above-FTP efforts really took their toll and had my legs protesting. Like I’ve said before, riding a lot won’t make you faster or stronger. It’ll just make you good at riding a lot.
It was a good streak and I’m genuinely grateful that my current work and life situation allows me to ride so much, but if I skip a day that’s cool too. Like everything in life, it’s all about balance. :-)
Tempo Cyclist - Tasmania 
Really interesting! I’ve had a coach and a power meter for my roadie for three months so I’m basically an expert now…. so yeah. Not enough recovery rides. To really stay in zone one and two is hard because it’s so little power it feels weird. When I’ve overdone it I totally lost my top end as well. Now, I don’t do more than 2 interval sessions a week and I have scheduled recovery rides plus at least one whole day off a week. And I’m getting faster. That cumulative fatigue is a killer. I’m a numbers nerd so I use training peaks as well as strava and I love all the data I get. It’s changing my life!! I expect I won’t always continue with coaching due to life circumstances but I’ve learnt so much about training, it’s been so helpful. You probably know all this already. But thought you might appreciate 2 cents from an “expert” 😂
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Always appreciate your feedback and advice! 😁 I was doing a bunch of 300+km weeks of hard riding in a row and it was obviously too much for me! Gonna dial it back a little now. Who’d you go with for coaching?
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Lol I can coach you now. No really, Justin Morris. 300 km weeks I would die.
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Life is all about balance, great share!
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Great effort. My mate rode every day for a year a few years ago. Mad. Rest days are the best days 😊
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I may just take a nap for the next four days!
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I agree with your findings about top-end speed. You’re right… so was theaveragebeginner… gotta have those active recovery days and they have to be SLLLOOOOOOWWWW.
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I definitely need to work on those sloooooow days! Even doing “recovery” on the trainer I tend to go a tiny bit too hard. Thanks! 🙂
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