establishing my base

[Dogmama]

This was helpful. I tried to do a "recovery ride" today, but I'm not sure I succeeded. It's very hilly near where I live, and the less hilly ways have a lot of cars. But I did go for a shorter ride, about 8.5 miles. Plan to go to the gym tomorrow and will focus on upper body as you suggest.

As for a log, what should I record? Any tips on this?

You can spin slowly up hills to try to get a recovery ride in.

Logging - if you're new, you might want to log everything. How far you road, any unusual circumstances (e.g., 30 mph headwind ), what you ate before & after & how you felt. That way, you can see if (for example) oatmeal is a better pre-ride meal than eggs, or orange juice & protein powder is a better post-ride refuel than a power bar. If you have a cyclometer, watch your average speed. If it starts to decline, you need a day (or two) off the bike.

In the gym, I always log my exercise and then number of sets X amount of weight used X number of reps. For example:

Bench press 3 X 70 X 10 (three sets, using 70 pounds and 10 reps for each set.)

I watch this closely because if I'm stagnant or sliding backwards, I'm probably training too much.

Also log any aches or pains, e.g., "rode hills - sore lower back" will be a cue that you need to spin on the hills - or maybe eliminate core/glute/leg work in the gym the day before a hill ride.

[Starfish]

You can spin slowly up hills to try to get a recovery ride in.

Ummm, I can't!

It is quite hilly where I am, and I have found that, unfortunately, I'm just not fit enough to spin up hills as recovery. I'll either drive my bike to someplace flat, or ride the trainer. I recently put my ancient, old, un-road-ridable mountain bike on the trainer, and I am leaving it there for the summer for recovery rides. I have found that by leaving a bike on the trainer, I find it easy to jump on for an easy spin, followed by a rolling-pin massage on my quads. It is really helping my recovery.

As for bike journal, I'm pretty geeky (Lise, I said geeky, NOT non-eecky! ) and record a lot. But, I'm finding that it does help over the long haul to see trends. I record:

Non-biking workouts
Bike maintenance/repair records
Route
Weather
Nutrition
Mood
Notes about how my body feels, soreness, burn, nausea, etc.
Riding partners
Mileage
Time (actual riding time)
Time (total time)
Avg. Speed (actual riding)
Elevation Gained
Heart Rate Average & Max
Time spent in 3 HR zones (plus time spent above & below)
Each week I total: time riding, elevation gained, miles, time in HR zones

It kind of seems like a lot sometimes, but I find that the picture of time, mileage, climbing and HR intensities helps give a much more complete picture as to why I feel great, or exhausted, or whatever. And, I'll realize that, oh, what looks like a stagnant few weeks in terms of mileage might not really be if my elevation gain per ride really increased, or if I did twice as much steady state HR work, etc.