Has anyone personal experience of how much their watts fell after time off, or know of any papers relating to this?
I'm curious as I've returned from a 2 week lay off with a chesty cold (and the week prior to that was an easy recovery week) and see my power down by around 20% on 5min and under efforts - was too tired to try a FT test. You could put it down to still having the cold, but I've been sympton free for about 4 days and have been riding at a low level in that time. I'm not worried, and am sure it will bounce back, but am curious. I think I've read that anaerobic power is the first to go, then later endurance.
I contracted mono and had to take about 10 days off the bike.
FT numbers didnt go down. I felt that I lost a little bit of my top end, e.g. short anaerobic efforts, but didn't do any testing to prove this. I was happy to see that my FT wasnt compromised, and didn't bother to test from there. I still have symptoms of mono, but it doesn't seem to massively effect my riding... I just feel tired every other moment of the day 😉 🙄
This may not be as related but i got hit by a car last sept, and basically took 3-4 months off the bike. After warming back up to cycling in feb with a bit of commuting and then easing into my rollers, i did a MAP test in march and found i hit 325w, when last summer i topped out at 350w. Not to bad a result for 4 months off the bike.A Month and a half later, i'm still working on getting my endurance and sustainable power, aswell as sprinting power back up where it was at the end of last season.
To a certain extent your body can use to the time to really recover, but if you're sick that might skue the results. But based on my past experience there's about a 4:1 bounce back time involved, with most absences. Take a Week off cycling completely, might take you, a day at recovery pace, another at steady pace to have your legs woken back up for a race on the thrid day back in the saddle.
