As many cyclist know, it is hard to go easy. For me, every single time I hop on a bike I want to hammer myself into an oblivion where it is just me and the pain in my quads. This tends to be a common thing for every cyclist, at least the people who like to go up hill. My dad is a prime example of someone who over trains. He goes hard all the time and it has actually worked out pretty well for him. I think in the past 3 months he's taken maybe 4 total days off the bike. Thats crazy. At this point in time though, it has caught up to him. He is almost 50 and can still kick my ass, but he has to rest now. If he rides hard for one to many days, he will start to cough profusely until my mom comes in and tell him he needs to take a few days off. He takes a few days off then it's back to the cycle of hurting yourself for a few days. This is all good and fun, but it is important to take rest days. During my time being injured, I tried my best to take a few rest days here and there, but try and stay pretty strict to 5 days a week on the trainer. This is hard to do. 5 days isn't too bad, but when you get up to 6 and 7, your starting to hurt your body.
Let us take some tour de france riders into account. GCN, a well known cycling channel on youtube, was able to get their hands on some data from last year's Tour De France with EF pro cycling. At the start of the tour, the riders have a super low resting heart rate of like 38-41 bpm, and are extremely fit. They then ride about 6 to 7 days of extremely hard and grueling stages of the race. After those days, their average resting heart rate goes up to 50-53. This is still low, but a extreme difference from the beginning. What this is showing is that the are tired and need to rest. If they kept this up for another 3 weeks, 4 weeks, they would probably be close to dying. But they get that one rest day. After that rest day, these riders actually get a little stronger. That is because they where able to give their body a rest and let themselves re-coop and start another hard 6-7 days. Now, the Tour De France is a sort of enigma. On paper, it is not healthy in anway to do the Tour De France. The rider's bone density decreases tremendously, and the amount of wear and tear on their bodies is tremendous.
Alright, so this does not really apply to any of us. We are just ou riding as much as we can, and are never given a situation where we have to ride 3 weeks none stop. However, it is important that we rest. Without any rest days, we wont be able to let are muscles re-coop. this can cause in a loss of fitness, even if your training really hard. So if you ride 5 or 6 days a week, thats perfect. You are giving yourself a little bit of time to relax and get ready for your next hard effort.
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