Oops, Over-Did The Recovery

Active recovery can be more effective than just sitting around but it's amazingly easy to over-do it unless you are very intentional, and in my case, I ought to get out the heart-rate monitor again and start measuring instead of going by feel.

I had planned to do 30 minutes of gentle spinning as active recovery today. Ideally that might average 50% - 60% of my maximum heart rate (MHR). Haven't measured this year, but my MHR is somewhere about 185. So for recovery, I should maintain a heart rate of only 92 - 111 beats per minute. It is extremely difficult to pedal this gently while riding on the road.

I was merrily wheeling away in the basement listening to my current favorite podcast. Just on a lark, tapped a free app on my phone, "Instant Heart Rate" and realized that at 142 beats per minute I was well into the "aerobic capacity" zone, i.e., 70% - 80% of MHR. This is a fine place to be as an average for a long workout to build fitness. But it's way over-doing it for active recovery. 

Heart rate training is a solid basis to build up your strength and endurance as a cyclist. It's not necessary. It's fine to just go ride whenever you want at whatever pace gives you joy. That's a far more Zen-like approach. But, if you want to throw a little science at your training efforts, mixing harder hard days and easier easy days in the proper proportion, can really help. Measuring your heart rate while training is the easiest and most direct measure of your training effort. 

You can measure your heart rate for free by placing three fingers on your opposite wrist or carotid artery. You can calculate heart rate zones or there are websites that will do it for you.

You can use your fingers, an app on a smart phone, or you can invest in a heart rate monitor. I use all three techniques at different times while training and during personal time-trial type training.