The Atheist Training Bible for Old Bicycle Racers, Chapter 25: Rest day
February 27, 2017 § 6 Comments
If you are a profamateur masters bike racer, no day is more important than your rest day. Except for race day. And of course your interval day. The only days as important as rest day, race day, and interval day are group ride day, gym day, easy spin day, and hill repeat day. Nothing is more important than those days.
So on rest day, as with the other really important days on your profamateur weekly calendar, which calendar you religiously update on TrainingPeaks until they discontinue the software and you’re forced to buy a new version for $499.99 (thanks, Obama), it’s important to have a lot of structure.
Structured rest days are key.
In fact, races are won on rest day. It’s not how hard you train, it’s how well you recover. Recovery is when your body undergoes training adaptations. Training tears down muscle, but it is only by eating a lot of #BeachbodyPerformance recovery chocolate bon-bons that your muscles are able to rebuild so that they are stronger than before and able to synchronize with the new demands of a #charonsmithinpirationalcyclingvideo.
As your training load increases, you must accommodate it with greater, higher quality, more better improved structured rest days.
For example, let’s say you are a typical SoCal profamateur leaky prostate masters faker with a $15,000 bike, a coach, and an aversion to riding when it is either too cold, too wet, too cloudy, too dark, too far, or too close to a race that you don’t intend to do #stravajunior. In this case your typical weekly training load includes lots of power lifting, intervals, 20-minute FTP testing, threshold climbing efforts, and as much #thorfinnsasquatch #marginalchinesegainproducts as you can afford.
In other words, when your rest day comes around you need about thirty of them.
Here is how you should spend your recovery day/month:
- Tell everyone to leave you alone.
- Stay in bed.
- Take plenty of intravenous hydration with #marginalchinesegains.
- Check #competitivecyclist every half-hour to see if there are any new #allcarbon products for sale.
- Call your buddy at the LBS and haggle him down to a below-profit price for anything new you find on #competitivecyclist.
- Don’t buy it from your buddy at the LBS anyway because, free shipping.
- Go onto d-bagbikeforums.com and trash talk Sagan for only getting second at Het Volk.
- Constantly check and re-check FB to make sure everyone liked your 38th place finish at the Ol’ Grizzles Turkeycrit last weekend.
- Calculate your calorie budget for the week and then order a bucket of fried chicken.
If you follow these steps you will be rarin’ to go for another amazing week of astonishing profamateur ath-a-letic accompishment. Go get ’em, tiger.
END
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Cycling in the South Bay 
Ol’ Grizzlies Turkeycrit – OMG. Priceless
Actually, $2.99 and you’re way paid up!
“For example, let’s say you are a typical SoCal profamateur leaky prostate masters faker with a $15,000 bike, a coach, and an aversion to riding when it is either too cold, too wet, too cloudy, too dark, too far, or too close to a race that you don’t intend to do”
Why let the elements affect your all carbon super shiny full carbon bike and risk a chip in the frame? Or have sweat ruin your new Rapha kit?
Exactly. That stuff is for framing.
That’s why I don’t race, checking my FB likes would crush my recovery.
That’s why I restrict my racing to FB.