Every other day......

You know, I wonder about this, too. Since I've taken an approach to recovery times similar to weight training on/off days since I've been riding, it hasn't let me down. When I take a day off is when I feel any kind of serious soreness... usually 3 consistent days I'll follow with a day or two off. But what you're talking about is something else entirely: when I first started out, I did what you're talking about, but not intentionally, and it worked fine... but back then I was only riding about 500 miles a month. Now I ride twice that, and seem to be okay with my current setup. I think that certain physio adjustments take place that let me ride more over consecutive days.

I do a 3 day cycle of easy, mild, intense. changes are in distance, speed and/or terraine (hills v. flats). It worked last year to get me up to a Century with 1 of the intense rides each week being the long ride which got longer by about 10% each week.

lorrod said:

Does anyone use the training routine where you ride hard one day, then take the next day either completely off.....or do a super easy short ride.....then ride hard again the next day, followed by another day off, etc? I know we've been talking about it on the other subject heading "[img]images.www3.cyclingforums.comsubscribed.gifOpen ↗[/img] 3-4 days a week- win P12's?", but wanted to find out if anyone was using this specific routine(1 on, 1 off, 1 on, 1 off, etc.) and how it was working for you, your riding/racing and your family life.

I personally would never use it, because training that way (which results in 3-4 days a week, depending on the week) would mean I'd have to average a 5+ hour ride for each time I rolled out. That's a difficult thing to do on a 5-day a week work/school schedule, and it also makes it tough to do specific intervals (because you then have to go ride for 4 more hours!) That said, it would be an interesting way for people in certain professions to train.