Recovery doesn’t just mean sitting on the sofa and, as a coach, I will often will set a recovery ride instead of a complete rest day.

In my experience, after a prolonged period of training your body is desperate for a chance to recover, and so if you take the day off instead of heading out on a recovery ride then when you get back on the bike your body will likely feel like it is in shutdown mode.

This is the reason that after a day off it can often take a day or so to feel good again on the bike. Completing a recovery ride instead of having a rest day will mean that when you get back into training you won’t need a session to get back into the flow of things.

This is especially important the day before an event. You don’t want to start a big race or sportive with bad legs, therefore riding the day before instead of taking a rest day will often be more beneficial.

A recovery ride is designed to give no training stimulus and so it should be at an intensity that requires no physical exertion. A recovery ride cannot be too easy – you should literally just be turning over your legs, not pushing on the pedals. One thing that I often tell my clients is that they are riding too hard in their recovery rides – but I will never say to anyone that they have ridden too easy.

In a recovery ride try and keep the cadence up and the power low. This minimises the amount of torque you are producing and, therefore, minimises the stress on your muscles.

But recovery isn’t just about what you do on the bike – it also starts the minute you step off the bike.