Recovery Week: Intensity, frequency, duration

decrease all of the above.  Recovery weeks can be very valuable for your body and your motivation, especially if you really pushed it on your 3 week.

I don't take recovery weeks on any predetermined ratio but take some rest days or decrease training based on how I feel.

In past years I have done 3/1 and 2/1 but found when I trained consistently my body handled it better and I got sick less often so since 2009 that is what I have done.

The 3/1 pattern is something Friel promoted and others especially in the US have followed but what I understand his conclusion from the research that set up that pattern was a bit flawed.

I love the recovery weeks too. I push pretty hard on the 3 weeks of build/base (whatever you call it), the recovery week really feels like a week of healing (emotional, physical, motivation goes up...).

Just not sure what approach is best. I know in a week of reduced activity, I want to be sure my fitness does not drop much. I suppose the aim is to have the fatigue level drop significantly, while maintaining fitness. Just not sure what the best approach is.

x2.  Recovery takes a day off or a day or two of very easy workouts for me.  I couldn't imagine a whole week like though.  key words there are "for me" - YMMV.

I think the goal of a recovery week is different than what is accomplished when taking one day off. I think it is similar but not the same as the weeks following a HIM or IM, or similar but not the same as one of the weeks in a two-week Taper for a big race. 

Total training volume is the combination of three variables:

1.  Duration
2.  Intensity
3.  Frequency

I prefer to lower an athlete's duration for the week but maintain most of the intensity and frequency. Not everyone is built the same, and some people prefer several days off in a row to totally recover. Personally, my legs begin to feel a bit "stale" if I just take time completely off and many people I've spoken to are the same way.

Regardless of the approach, the idea behind either a recovery or taper week is to allow the body to rebuild and repair the effects of long-term training stress and to avoid overtraining.  Keep notes in your training log of what approach works best for you so that you can better plan your recovery and taper strategy as your season progresses.

If you are training so hard during the 3 weeks 'on' that you need a week 'off', then you should probably back off the 'on' weeks and pick up the 'off' and do more work overall. 

Your life may dictate a schedule like that or it may help you mentally (which are both fine), but from a training perspective it serves no real purpose to take a 'recovery' week every 4.  That doesn't mean recovery isn't important or that some weeks won't be 'bigger' than others.

I'm with Johnny on this one. I don't do recovery weeks, though I'll take easy days if I need to.

This is the way to do it if your into periodized training. Personnally I feel it is a legitimate way to train and peak for key races and has been used by many top athletes in endurance sports.

I like the 7day training cycle for the reasons you have noted. I am in a position where I am trying to increase volume over time. Over the winter months it was 8-10hrs per week and pretty steady. I am now building up the volume and trying to peak at a 16hr week before race season. For instance, the last 3 weeks were 12.5, 13.5, 14. I really feel the difference between a 10hr week and a 14 hour week, that's for sure! This is because a high volume (for me >13hrs) week is foreign to me, and my body needs time to adapt to this volume.

If I just kept increasing 12.5, 13.5, 14, 14.5, 15, 15.5, 16; sure, I might get there faster, but in my mind I am significantly increasing the chances of injury, illness, and decrease in performance due to over-training. Hence, the periodization, my body needs to recover from the increased training load from the previous weeks that it has never been subjected to before. Maybe 24-48hrs off is all I need to recover from the building I have done for the past 3 weeks. Those 24-48 hours off will reduce your weekly volume and probably end up being what I call a "recovery week". So your method for recovering from workouts (correct me if I am wrong) is to reduce frequency of the workouts (i.e., skip a workout that would have otherwise been in your training program in order to recover), and keep all else the same. 

Every plan you have looked it has a recovery week because people expect to see it.  They believe it is "periodization".  It is not.  Recovery should be built into every plan.  And it should be adjusted when necessary.

The idea of training is to progressively overload your body and drive adaptations.  You can certainly use very big weeks (or days or whatever time frame you like) and then back off and recover (and from time-to-time, that can be a very good idea).  Or you can build, plateau, build, plateau, etc.  GENERALLY, what I see people doing for recovery weeks is a waste of training time.  They would be better off cutting back from their big weeks and doing more on those recovery weeks from a training perspective.  The reason being that they would do more total work with less chance of injury.  And likely have better recovery throughout the month.  There's no magical reason for 3 weeks on/1 week off (or any other system like that).  But, if it keeps the individual happy, motivated, etc. then it's all good.

I'm sure that's clear as mud.