How to improve HR recovery time?

[Funhog]

Hey Butterfly (i love your sign off)!

Think of the concept of specificity. The event you're training for, a metric century, is a long distance at an aerobic, steady state intensity. Short, high intensity intervals won't be as helpful for this particular event. They can help though, for mountain biking and for a TT.

If you were out of commission for a year, you are still building yourself back up. I would recommend a good base building program. This strengthens the heart and works on teaching your body to prefer fat as its fuel source. A stronger, more aerobically fit heart will recover faster (but it will still need to be challenged to learn to recover from higher intensity efforts). Maybe you've already been doing your base building, and that's awesome. If so, then it's time to train your threshold, knowing that it might take you a year or two to be back where you were prior to your time off (I don't know your history as I'm new here so there might be more to it than I am aware of).

By training your threshold through long intervals, you can actually raise your LT. That will be a very beneficial thing for your century!

Start with 10 minute intervals at around LT (you can do a 20-min field test to guestimate it). 2-3 sets. 2X per week (like Mon/Thur). Gradually increase the length to 15, then 20, then 30-min. You can do these outside - using hills about that length as your threshold, or pacing with someone else (as long as they realize you need to recover in between sets). Recovery only needs to be about 5 minutes or so.

The rest of the week is spent at aerobic zones, with at least one long ride per week (2 hrs, building to 4 or 5).

Doesn't mean higher intensity intervals won't be good for you, especially if the long ride you plan on doing has a lot of steep climbs (but you should be fit enough so that you don't hit anaerobic intensities on these climbs anyway). They can help with performance, and power if you want/need that, or just or the feel-good occasional adrenaline rush that HIT (high intensity training) gives you. Once per 2 weeks or so. But just know they aren't specific to that event (they're more for faster races, crits, mountain biking, etc). If the longer event comes first, focus on the longer TH intervals. Then when that's complete, start adding some shorter, higher intensity intervals for the next events.

Let me know if you want some info on field testing your LT. (unless you've had it tested).