LOSING IT VS GETTING IT BACK

Time off the bike is the enemy of fitness but how bad is the damage and how best to reverse it? James Shrubsall investigates the science of detraining and retraining

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Arriving back at my front door, I leaned heavily against the jamb. Despite the discomfort, there was a small swell of pride at what I'd just achieved, and now I was ready for a very long sit down. We've all been there at the end of a long ride, exhausted and aching, the sofa beckoning. But I wasn't returning with 100km in my legs. Rather, I had hobbled the 50 metres to the end of my road and back without a walking stick, for the first time in months.

My back issues had set in over a period of weeks and months in 2019 as I attempted to keep riding through yet another round of disc-related niggles. Lifting weights in the gym only succeeded in making things worse. By mid-July I could barely ride; by the end of the month, I had to stop. The next time I rode a bike was mid-November, and a five-minute spin at 85 watts on the turbo was all I could manage.

At that point, after four months of complete rest, my fitness levels were almost certainly the worst they'd ever been, not just because of the lack of cycling, but the lack of any movement at all. I refused to let go of the belief that one day I would be OK - my back would eventually recover. But what about my cycling fitness and formwhat would it take to get that back?

In this feature, I want to investigate exactly what happens to our fitness when we rest and detrain, and how long we can expect to have to work to get that fitness back. Detraining and retraining are concepts most cyclists are familiar with. We know that even after taking a week or two off for a holiday, we don't feel as sharp as we did before. Most of us have at some point taken longer off the bike owing to illness or injury, and have then discovered that the comeback is not quite so straightforward. Grudgingly, we attempt to ease back in.