It all starts, and ends, with recovery. You cannot achieve your potential without proper recovery methods, and I can’t help you unless you learn and apply these methods. Simple as that.
This entire recovery philosophy was borne out of necessity. I spent the first 10 years or so of my career racing the standard type of bike event in the west, the weekend stage race.
Towns are so far apart, promoters need to offer 3 stages to attract riders. Hence, crit, TT, RR. 3 stages, 2 days. That means you better learn how to recover or you are in for many a long weekend. And we did learn. As the years passed we tried and experimented with just about everything except maybe voodoo in the effort to be ready for the next stage. If necessity is truly the mother of invention, desperation REALLY is the mother of invention. Nothing like sitting on a hotel bed at 8PM on a Saturday nite feeling like someone has beaten your legs with a baseball bat and knowing that at 6AM you have to get up and get ready to go hammer 80 or 100 miles in the wind and hills. THAT will make you figure out how to recover as much as humanly and legally possible. What followed are RR methods that were borne from a very hot fire indeed.
Every single rider I have worked with that uses these methods on a day to day basis, swears by them. It becomes part of your everyday routine. Don’t do it and you feel unprepared and vulnerable for the next day. When a rider tells me he had problems in a race, the first thing I ask is about his recovery from the day before.
The worst thing I can hear is “ I was so tired I did not do any recovery”. YIKES! The more tired you are, the more you need to do them. And it is not hard. Takes some time. Just needs to be done.
Now, no matter what recovery you do, nothing can restore you to 100% after a difficult day. The point is to make you as good as you can be, given the previous days efforts.
This system enables that to happen.
You are the one that suffers if you don’t pay attention and do what is right. And the guy next to you profits. You do the math.
So, here we go. I will give the Recovery highlight occasionally followed with one of my many(and bear with me here) IWT “ I was there moments ”..
1. During/ride-race-Make sure you drink and eat properly, this will give you a head start on the next day.
IWT: Evanston Wyoming RR June 2003. Due to apocalyptic weather, I was so frozen I could not lift a water bottle (dropped two trying) much less eat. I plodded for 3 hours at a near max effort with no fuel. I did all my post race recovery, but I knew I was in trouble just because of what I was not able to do on the bike the day before. I was now faced with a 7AM TT that I tell you HURT LIKE HELL. My legs were blocked from the beginning despite a desperate, careful warm-up, trying to coax my legs into life. The first 5 miles were like pedaling in sand. Finally they sprang to life, albeit a bit late, but by the end I felt like I was cruising along pretty well. Bottom line, I finished 5th, 45 seconds out of first. A TT I coulda, shoulda won, but the day before cost me heavily. Moral of the story? If I had not maximized every post race recovery step, I know I would have not made the top twenty. Why take a chance? You have to maximize what you can do, and the RR steps will allow you to do this.
2.Immediate Post ride: You have a 30 minute window to ingest a carb/protein recovery drink(Endurox, Extran, etc) This is so critical it is nearly biblical. 30 minutes. This window closes rapidly and you can severely impair your REC process if you miss it. Make sure you have this drink prepared and ready to go, post ride. Gatorade is a poor REC drink, BTW. Sugary mess it is. This one thing can enhance your recovery by up to 50% the next day. Wow. Not to be messed with. AT ALL.
3. Get off your feet ASAP, cover your legs.
Do not under any circumstances stand around the parking lot, in your shorts for goodness sake, and rehash glory earned or lost. Keep your legs warm, and sit down. Compression socks or TEDS.
4. Within 2-3 hours eat a good protein/carb meal.
5. Massage the hell out of your legs with the ‘stick’.
Always working up towards the heart, not down. Pay attention, and really work over the sore spots. The key to recovery in increased blood flow, flush the toxins. Keeping your legs warm and stimulating blood flow with massage is vital. I absolutely swear by the stick. The relief is immediate. Don’t just mamby pamby it though, really work and get to know your leg muscles, how they feel, how they respond. Post stick-work feeling is very indicative to how you will ride the next day.
6. Lie on the floor and elevate your legs up on the wall, till your toes start to tingle. Power flush at work.
8.You may as an additional trick(one of my teammates used to swear buy this)is to fold a blanket over a couple of times, or a towel, and sleep with your legs elevated a couple of inches.
9. The last bit of recovery voodoo is my favorite, yet not used nearly as often as it should be by most riders. A pair of TEDS, or support hose, funny as it sounds, will do absolute wonders for wrecked legs. They are used to promote blood flow in the legs for many medical conditions, and I tell you once you get used to them, and no one else in the hotel sees you with them on, wow, you too will swear by them. I know of one devotee that forgot his, and in desperation, had his girlfriend drive 100 miles to make sure he had them for that night. They work, oh, do they work. I like the push pull method of blood-force flow. TEDS or cold water drives the blood down deep, then TEDS off or heat(hot tub)brings the blood to the surface. Push pull, push pull. I wear compression socks(Zensah) or TEDS, 2 hours at a time. Push Pull.
IWT: After a difficult, cold, nasty climb of Mt Evans in Colorado one year, (and those of you that have done this race that ends at 14, 000 feet know what I am talking about), I was sitting in a van waiting for a ride down. There were about 8 riders, stacked liked cordwood, all still in the race gear, all with various looks of physical exhaustion on their faces. My friend was sitting next to me. We were all sitting silently, like near-dead sheep. The only words I heard from my friend for the next 30 minutes was a muttering of “ I need my hose”. Enough said.
Learn the Recovery methods, quite simply they enable you to be the best you can be after a hard ride.
