Subject: RE: Recovery days? Recovery days don't have to be no-workout days. When I was a pure runner my only no-run days during the season were after long (1/2M or longer) races where I went all out, or one day during recovery weeks. I'm now trying to retool to be a triathlete, and in general my strategy has been to take a recovery day once per week, doing a relatively easy workout on that day. Usually that means an easy swim, but sometimes it's an easy bike. This seems to work well for me. YMMV. As for ratios of easy to hard workouts, you'll find different suggestions out there, but the one thing that they all (as far as I know) have in common is that there is far more easy volume than hard volume (you'll see ratios like 80-20 or even 90-10). The main point here is that in order to make the most of your hard workouts, they need to be truly hard. But they won't be if you are tired, which is one of the most important reasons why your easy workouts need to be easy. Of course, things are more complicated, because there are different kinds of' 'hard' workouts. To take the obvious case, a long run is hard in a way that is different from intervals. The best way (IMO) to start getting a sense of a good mix of workouts is to look at a variety of plans, then try one and see how it goes. |