Ooh it’s a Christmas Miracle. Or more accurately, Zwift’s Miracle workout.
20 minutes of “fun”. Short. Sharp. And to the point. Though with a 5 minute warm up, and a 1.5 minute cooldown, there’s really only 8 minutes of actual effort thrown in here.
Was it a good use of my time? Let’s have a look see, and find out.
In short, I am very probably overdoing it at the moment. This whole Advent of Cycling malarky sounded like a great idea in late November, but today, with 11 consecutive days or riding under my wheels, I am shattered.
I also have a mighty saddle sore on my right cheek. So any time on the bike is even more painful on my ass than it is on my legs.
Those two reasons combined make up my reasoning for keeping today’s ride short.
I actually didn’t see that the Miracle Workout contains 2x 1 minute free ride max / full gas efforts before starting. That was a real treat to behold that I only found out about once I’d set off and started reading about what this workout had in store.
But, we can do anything for a minute, right?
The kicker here is that the 1 minute full gas efforts come after three preliminary efforts, each one a bit harder than the last.
These efforts are all done at 90rpm, and are:
- 1 minute at 95% FTP
- 1 minute at 105% FTP
- 1 minute at 115% FTP
With a very short 15 second break in between.
After the third effort you get a 30 second break then it’s into the 1 minute full gas un-ERG’d free ride. You select your gearing and give it the beans.
My plan was to aim for two efforts at 400w or greater.
I couldn’t remember my previous one minute PB.
I found out later it is (or was) 570w.
At the time I knew that figure was ridiculous. I’d stormed off at an out of saddle sprint pace and tapered off massively at the end.
This effort was not only seated, but fatigued, and with the requirement of doing it all over again after a two minute break.
Now the on screen coach was expecting not only a repeated effort, but a higher wattage the second time round.
Initially I had some aspirations of doing this. And maybe I would have done so had I not averaged 413w in my first effort.
That basically killed me and I was barely recovered down to 170bpm in time for the second free ride attempt. I think I managed more like 310w or similar average in the second go, but I did manage to steadily increase after 30 seconds and again after 45 seconds. So not all bad.
So was it a good workout for the time available?
Well, there’s not a lot you can get done in 20 minutes. But this felt like as good an effort as any. I’d say it was slightly better than a free ride, but you could probably eek out more calories burned if you managed your own pacing. As above you only actually get 8 minutes of effort here, though its bursty rather than consistent.
Under normal circumstances once I’ve made the effort to get my kit on, get Zwift booted up and my course selected and all that jazz, I’m wanting more than twenty minutes of time on the bike.
But if you’re time pressed and maybe want to get in a decent effort in your lunch break, this one could be a good one.
I’d not recommend it for beginners. The short time might seem attractive but this one kicks your ass if you do the free ride at true full gas. Or at least it did for me.
The question at this point becomes what to do tomorrow?
I honestly don’t know at this point. Truthfully I want a rest. A nice day off. But I’m at the half way point on my advent calendar as of tomorrow so there’s no way I’m going to be stopping now.
What I do need to do is figure out why Zwift is no longer uploading my rides to Strava. As it stands all the stats come from my Garmin at this point which is why they don’t match the screenshots. Just like today when I only pressed the go button nearly a minute in. Whoops.
