When To Train After A Race
Published: 13th April, 2010MTB racing is not only extremely intensive (around the same workload in 2 hours as a hard 4 hour road race), but you also have the all-body muscular workout from controlling the bike, and absorbing impacts. All this adds up to a lot of fatigue. If you start training again too soon, you will compound this fatigue and gradually head downhill. Leave it too long, and you won’t get the same benefit from the effort you’ve made in the race.
Speeding up the recovery
Warm down after your race – even when it is wet and cold – throw on a big jacket and spend 5 minutes pedalling. This will keep the blood flowing to the muscles, and start the recovery process.Eat and drink
You have a window of around 20-30 minutes after hard exercise where your body is extremely receptive to food. Some people can’t, or don’t like eating this close to a race, so try using an energy drink, or a protein drink.How many days before you can train
This is completely individual, some can ride the next day, others need a week. You need to experiment a bit to work this one out. I always recommend active recovery (very low intensity riding) rather than complete rest. This allows you to get a feel for how your recovery is going – you might feel your legs are actually OK after a day of this, and are ready to get training again.After you start training again, keep an eye out for the symptoms of over-reaching (where you train too hard, and need to take big rests); muscle soreness, significantly raised resting heart rate, disturbed sleep/difficulty getting to sleep. If you catch these early, all you’ll need are a couple of extra rest days – ignore them and you could need weeks off.
Races are great opportunities to analyse your abilities – have a think about the race, what went well, what went badly? In order to progress for the next race, you need to modify your training to improve on the things you were weak on, whether physical, technical, or in your preparation. Use this information to make small changes to your training – a bit more climbing, a few more technical rides, or some longer rides to improve your endurance. Always make changes to your programme small, monitor how they affect you. Stick to these guidelines, and you should continue to progress from race to race.
Neil Walker is a Sports Science Graduate, and British Cycling Qualified Coach, and competed in the 1998 Commonwealth Games for Scotland. Neil worked for the Great Britain Cycling Team from 2000 – 2005 as a coach and team manager, including 2 years (2003 – 2005) as MTB-XC Coach.
