I’m having something of a rest week this week. That was kind of unplanned, but I have an entirely more free week next week, and as a result, I want to get a couple of bigger rides in.
One of these bigger rides will be the FTP test.
And the other will be a century ride.
At least, that’s the plan.
With that in mind, I’ve been going for shorter workout rides so far this week, and plan to do so for the rest of the week. At least, Thursday and Friday. The weekend rides will be longer, but may still be workouts.
I’m quite enjoying them.
For this ride I took on Jon’s Short Mix at my current FTP: 196w.
This is my first attempt at Jon’s Short Mix at 196w, and I found it to be decent with only one stumbling block.
On the 30 minute exercises, the warm up periods are ridiculously short – and then boom, let’s get right into it, shall we? Yes, why the heck not.
I was under the assumption, initially, that I would try to do all the efforts without getting out of my saddle.
The first two one minute blocks at 295w were fine enough.
What I hadn’t realised at this point was that I was in the little ring at the front.
It’s always harder to decipher what gear I’m in when using ERG mode, as the trainer just seems to take over and even changing gears only has any impact for about 3 seconds until the Tacx Neo 2 cottons on to my antics and adjusts.
Anyway, I’d managed to stay in the saddle for the first set.
But then came the sprints.
Ok, I figured there was no way I could crank out 590w sat down.
Plan: out of the window.
I got myself ready to put in an effort. But I have no control when I get out of the saddle. I can push, but I can’t push to a specific wattage. I just get whatever I get.
So, I had a bit of a mare on the first sprint.
As I pushed, as ever, the Neo 2 resistance just isn’t that responsive right away. It goes really heavy then slackened off, then heavier again, slackened off… and my poor legs and more importantly, my knees, just took the brunt of this mayhem over about a 3-5 second period.
Not great. And I kinda don’t blame myself here either. I am not convinced the hardware is spot on. I’ve thought this ever since I got the thing, and have mentioned it as a gripe many times. It’s fine over longer intervals, but the short bursts, it’s not so great.
Maybe a firmware update is available. I’ll need to check.
With the sprints out of the way, I was mentally preparing for the 10 minutes at 175w.
Zwift did prompt me to select a typical gear, and I did. Just not at the front. Whoops.
Anyway, keeping a high cadence for 10 minutes is actually a great workout in itself. So whilst it was harder than it might ought to have been, it was decent in hindsight.
I’m considering maybe doing the hour long Jon’s Mix on Friday night. Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know, I’ll see how I feel. Hell of a week.
I didn’t choose a course tonight. I went with what Zwift suggested. No hill. So in 30 minutes I managed to do about double the km’s as to what I did yesterday.
All a bit of nonsense really. 100km flat is so much easier than 10x up the Alpe. Yet they both meet that 100km a week goal.
I think this is the first time in a while the TSS man has had nothing to say. Shameful. Must try harder 😉
I am weirdly looking forwards to pushing myself in the FTP test. I want to get above 200w, that’s all I know. That will be some serious improvement over the last 4 months.
