Finishing off what’s been a decent week on the bike, I opted to tackle Zwift’s 10-12wk FTP Builder Week 6 Day 4.
This being an hour and a half (or so), I have had to leave this ride until the weekend in order to fit it in.
For once, I remembered to have the Zwift Companion App up and running at the start of my ride in order to screencap the unlock of the final Zwift Academy item – the kit.
Unfortunately I had mucked up here and not chosen the workout, so had to quit out and log back in. Zwift really need to sort that out – you should be able to finish a ride without closing the entire program.
At ~1.5 hours, I anticipated this being a long one in the saddle, so had a few tunes and things lined up to keep me occupied. I’d checked out the interval schedule earlier, through WhatsOnZwift (great site) so wasn’t caught by surprise with what I had to work through on this one.
Generally, aside from sweating profusely throughout (nothing new there), this one wasn’t so bad. There was one tough part, which I’ll get too towards the end.
Right off the bat, the ride included a long warm up (as is to be expected on a longer ride I suppose), and this included a preview of the 160w effort, and the 190w effort.
Neither caused me too much concern, though as ever my cadence was far too high, too early.
The first 12 minute block was fairly run of the mill. I was alt+tabbed for a chunk of it, largely to keep myself occupied whilst I turned over the pedals.
Throughout, my cadence was high – 95rpm+ as best I recall – and had no troubles here.
Likewise, the second 12 minute effort went by fairly quickly, and after each block I got a healthy 8 minutes at 100w to recover. During the recovery I tried to keep to about 75rpm, though crept up and up so that by the next block I was at or around 85rpm.
Certainly the second of the two blocks felt longer. I could feel some fatigue settling into my thighs predominantly, but it wasn’t anything concerning.
I had no problems with the forthcoming 3 minutes @ 190w, 2 minutes @ 100w intervals. This would be repeated five times. I do remember looking at the time remaining, and the amount of intervals… and thinking, jeez this might hurt.
The first interval went fine. This was at or around 95rpm.
The second was OK, too. However, I found it a little tougher to keep a steady rhythm for this one.
By the end of the third, I could feel my thighs tightening up. The last two blocks would be more grueling than I anticipated.
Unexpectedly, the fourth block was perhaps the smoothest / most consistent of the lot.
But the fifth was hard, hard work. I found myself thinking how fortunate it was that each interval was only three minutes. I also found I was turning the pedals over as fast as I could, in order not to feel the bite of resistance at a lower cadence.
Needless to say, I was happy to see the scheduled workload over for the day.
If I’d have left the workout to run to completion, I would have come in just under 50km.
I figured I’d pause the workout and ride out the remaining few kilometers, then resume the cool down once I’d hit 50km.
I hit 50km, and then due to the misleading symbols in the app, I skipped the cool down block … d’oh.
This was frustrating, but in the end I simply did my own thing, slowing down over a 5 minute period, as I would have done in the scheduled block.
Hitting 50km again felt decent.
Smashing 825 calories felt great.
This went some way to negating the damage done on Saturday night with my curry intake.
165km on the week is massive, as is 6 hours on the saddle.
Happy with this, and feel I have earned a rest day tomorrow.
I’m seriously considering my next ride as being one of the Tacx film rides. This is totally different to Zwift, and I’m not sure if this will be trackable via Strava. Hopefully it is. I’d ideally like to track all my indoor cycling as best I can.
As I sit here typing this, 5 hours later, my thighs do feel quite tight. I didn’t stretch enough once off the bike today. I also have felt considerably more tired than a usual 30km ride would have me.
I’ve had a look at the remaining weeks in the FTP Builder program, and fortunately none of them contain any rides longer than this one – as best I could see. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the longer rides, it’s simply a time issue for me.
Also, I’d really like to use my time better whilst on the bike. Listening to music is fine, but it feels like wasted time. I’m considering an audio book, but am open to other suggestions.
What do you do?
