Wondering if anyone else feels better the day after a long and/or hard ride. I almost always do. For example, yesterday I did 4 x 20 minute high tempo/low sweet spot intervals for first 2 hours and ended with 2 hours zone 2. I kept a cap on my HR of 170, so if during an interval my HR hit 170 I would back off the power a little to get it back down. On yesterday’s ride I had an average power on each interval around 265 watts and HR 166. I didn’t feel bad but HR seemed a little high for that effort. Today I repeated the same workout and averaged around 280 watts per interval and HR 162. And felt amazing! I’ve noticed this over and over. I never feel great after a rest day, and always feel horrible my first workout back after a regen week. Makes me really wonder how my tapering strategy should be for important races.
Hey Josh! This is not too uncommon, I actually experience it myself. In fact this saturday I did 7 hours and 7500ft of climbing and then sunday went out and did a strong gravel ride, felt amazing and didnt want to stop. I have had the same thing happen at stage races (one of the reasons that i like doing them too 
).
Being in tune with your body & knowing how it responds to different types of training is very important as an athlete. However athletes do not always respond positively to this kind of training stimulus, even if they have in the past because there are so many factors that come into play when it comes to performance. That is why we are such strong advocates for having a coach. Together you talk about how your body responds to workouts, what kind of training load you have been carrying, your stress outside of training, etc and then adjust your training accordingly so that you can perform at your best when it matters most.
With all of that said, keeping your legs sharp going into an event is important, which is why our race plans are designed with some higher intensity at the beginning of a race week. From there we include a rest day or two and then leg openers the day before the race so that you “wake the legs up again” and are ready to fire off the start line.