Day Off

Today is my day off. That means I get to eat a reasonable amount of calories, and lay about doing nothing but watching movies.

Recovery is an important part of any training regimen, and a great asset to any elite level athlete. Too many athletes push themselves to the point of chronic exhaustion and dehydration.

Your resting heart rate in the morning is a great indicator of when you need recovery. Record it every morning. If it's abnormally high, it may be best to stay in bed.

If you leap 2 meters out of bed every morning and zip out of the house on your bicycle, you don't need recovery. If workouts are becoming non-fun drudgery, it may be time to take a day off.

One of the things we tried to do in planning the Boston to Santa Barbara route was to provide more intelligently spaced recovery days. Usually, you need about a day off per week, and a couple of weeks off once a year.

There is a difference, of course, between recovery and laziness. Heh heh.