The Power of Recovery

As I have thought back over the past 3 months of heavy training and long rides, one thing (that I don't think I've mentioned yet) has become clear with the 20/20 capabilities of hindsight.

That "thing" is the importance of recovery.

At my age (42) I can no longer go hard day after day endlessly. In fact, one or two hard rides a week is all I can muster. But I'm noticing that as I have gotten older, my ability to finish a hard ride and still have energy to work in the yard, or run errands with the wife, or goof around with the kids, has increased. It used to be that the wife would be frustrated because a hard ride meant I was useless for the rest of that day. Not so anymore!

I know what some of you are thinking, "man, that EPO is good stuff". But I'm not doping, except for the occasional foray into sodium phosphate loading (which ought to be illegal). No, my secret is that I make sure I'm taking time to recover properly between hard rides.

So, that's my tip for the day (which would be a profound thing if I was doing something like a "tip of the day" type blog, but I'm not, so it's just today's tip, with no expectation for further tips to follow, though they might anyway at some point.)

Now that you're thoroughly confused.