Tonight was my first time taking part in a 3R PedalPlay EVOLVE Interval Ride ~2.9-3.2 w/kg group ride. This wasn’t a workout, but a ride with a fence and a ride leader.
Before going any further I should say I’ve been flirting with the idea of using the Peloton app as a sort of guided workout whilst doing the ride as a “free ride” in zwift, and using the gears to control the resistence.
I’d say these sorts of rides are the closest thing that Zwift has to that kind of Peloton / spin class experience at the moment. And for me, these rides are vastly more enjoyable than the rubber banded group workouts.
Out of the gate, I was a bit lapse in concentration.
I mentioned a few days ago that I’ve been mis-using my Wahoo Tickr all this time. And whilst I now know that I’m supposed to wet the two specific areas on the band, I yet again managed to soak the internals / electronics of the Tickr, and so started the ride without my heart rate strap in place.
During my last weekly review, I talked about how this might be giving the Garmin Training Status a bit of grief. And so I was quite keen to get this working for this ride.
Fortunately, I did have my towel close to hand so could dry off the internals and get the Tickr working. But in doing so, I’d fallen off the back of the pack and had to work a bit to get back on.
Whilst this ride was billed as a 2.9-3.2w/kg average, I think I’d grossly misjudged this one, thinking it would be a steady paced effort.
I confess, I didn’t read the ride description prior to joining.
What it was, was a bit more like The Wringer.
Each lap of the volcano circuit, we would do progressively longer intervals at 3.5w/kg, dropping to 2.75w/kg to recover after the effort.
First lap: 2m @ 3.5w/kg, next lap: 2.5m @ 3.5w/kg, and so on.
This went well enough for me. I have to say, I was working at a really high intensity to keep up with the pack after the first four laps.
And then really disappointingly, about half way around lap 6 my bluetooth or ant+ connection died for about 8 seconds, and I was dropped. Hard.
Given the break neck pace of the pack, there was just no way for me to catch up. I really tried, but whilst we were on, the pack was averaging probably over 3.5w/kg, so I’d have needed to average about 5w/kg to get back to them.
Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of reserve in the tank, and I had to settle for watching them disappear off my screen.
Really disappointing. But something that I hope to correct the next time I do this ride.
I guess I could have given up, but instead I decided to keep to the schedule. Even though I wasn’t with the pack, and even though it wasn’t going to be exactly at the start of each Volcano lap, I figured I could follow the ride leaders prompts and still complete the workout.
Sure, my last lap took about 8 minutes whereas it should have taken about 5.5, but that’s just a better workout, right?
And boy howdy, 800 calories burned on a Tuesday night? I’ll take that any night of the week. 1 x ice cream earned.
Aside from falling off the pack, I thoroughly enjoyed this ride.
Yes, it was hard.
I sweated, a lot.
My legs are tired now, but this was pretty much exactly what I needed. This was a solid workout, with a good bunch of people who were pushing my to work hard.
I’d still like to try the Peloton style ride, but I’m not quite sure how that might work for me – I don’t have a good place to put the iPad to watch the workout, and I’m not sure I can run it from my PC… so this kind of ride fills that gap for me.
I’d definitely join this ride again.
I hadn’t planned to do this one, but would recommend it to anyone looking for an alternative to an SST session. Especially so if you like group rides or more social workouts without rubber banding.
Good stuff.
