Hello fellow riders
Just looking for some assistance
I just recovering from a cycle accident “who left the dog out?” and back on the bike now but after a 3 week off the bike I am literally back to beginning. No power in the legs, hesitations, confidence is very low, rides which I could “eat for breakfast” now is a nightmare stop and go.
It is not a dedication issue or love for the sport.
I thought even after 3 weeks will count nearly as a extended recovery time but honestly loosing all my fitness it is very strange to me.
A 700-900 ascend is absolutely nightmare holding flat above 25km/hr is unbearable now.
What do you recommend please? I know to some recovery will be faster to some slower but right now I even pulled out from the group to not slow them down that bad is became
Many thanks for your assistance support or even only to listen
Not riding for 3 weeks is definitely going to affect your performance. We don’t know how often you rode before, but I bet your CTL is way down because of this.
Simple answer is, keep riding. In about 2 or 3 weeks I’d say you’d get your legs back, but again, depends on how much you rode before.
I also keeping my water intake but this seems to me right now not the issue. I thought a recovery will assist but more I do less capable I am
I am starting to think is psychological fatigue but after 3 weeks I doubt.
I’ve had two times where I’ve had similar time off the bike due to illness. The first time I tried to jump back in and play “catch up” and was trying to get back to the numbers I was putting out before hand as quickly as possible.
The second time I spent the first 2 weeks just riding. I recorded all of my rides but never looked at the data while on the bike or after. Once the legs felt like they had some spark in them was when I started back into proper training. My season ended up playing out much better this time than the first.
Thank you for the responses.
I will try to keep some Z1/Z2 ride and increase some cadence. If I understand correctly that what is recommended for the next few weeks?
Just worried now that all my hard work since December lost due to a 3 week off and honestly is fighting how quickly my fitness became “useless”
I know age is important also but I cannot reverse that.
So I will not embark on a new plan at least until I have some extra CTL fitness
I do not know what else I can do for now but I truly appreciate all the answers
3 weeks off plus recovering from injury means your body went into full shut-down and heal mode.
I’d start with the base plan. Write off the rest of your season mentally so that you can accept and be happy with base miles. But then if you actually bounce back and get some pop in the legs, you can be surprised happily. If you beat your head against a wall trying to recover your pre-injury watts immediately, you’ll likely dig a deeper hole, not to mention end up having no fun.
take a performance step back and just enjoy the scenery for a bit!
As someone who was off the bike for 4 weeks this spring from a crash, heres my experience. Like you, when I started riding again, my fitness totally disappeared. When I started back, I just did endurance “free rides” for a few weeks before I started with structure, Just added volume as my body could handle it, and took easy days or breaks when it said so. After a few weeks, I started back with some sweetspot 1 or 2 and built up from there. Fitness will come back, just ease into it as your muscles need to relearn what they used to do.
I have had a few instances the last couple years, one was a dog strike and a second a tick illness. Dog was at the end of the 18 week plan and the tick was in the middle. In each case I lost a ton, the dog crash was spring of 2020, and the tick was fall of 2020 just as I was getting back from the dog. I was out about 3 weeks for each, I restarted the 18 week base in each case with recovery from the tick virus and subsequent hospital stay taking about 10months for me to feel similar to prior with similar ctl numbers. Good luck, just keep working and hoping you recover faster than mine. I’m 55 btw.
Now I’ve just managed to get into the MTB XC plan and feel like I’ve made gains finally.
