Today I rode the Week 4 Day 2 workout from Zwift’s 10-12 week FTP builder program.
As far as I can recall, this is the first time I have ridden this workout. It was a refreshing change from the typical 6 blocks of blue workout in this program.
Outside we continue with the heat wave. I chose to ride earlier in the afternoon today – 4pm till 5pm.
Partly this was because I didn’t get to ride yesterday, and wouldn’t have wanted too anyway, as it was too hot.
But partly because it felt like it was potentially cooler at this point, and I was honestly tired of having spent the day revising / swatting up for an interview.
I was pretty curious as to how this workout would pan out in terms of overall distance covered.
On Monday, riding the same course but on a different workout, I made it to corner 13 having covered ~500m of climb.
I had it in my head that 500m or greater would be perfect for today. I’m on the L’Etape Du Tour Mission and am aiming to shave off as much of this per ride as possible in order to meet the ~4500m climb goal by July 28th.
It felt like I reached the bottom of Alpe Du Zwift faster than last time. I think this is partly because last time I’d mistaken the start of the ride – down at the bottom of the reverse Epic KOM (I think) for the start of the Alpe. Whoops. Such a newb.
I found the two 5 minute ramp up sections quite full on. This wasn’t because of the wattage, but instead, because of the cadence.
In ERG mode, the trainer will adapt the resistance to whatever power you put out. So spinning faster just means you work your legs more, but the resistance feels lower. It’s quite unusual.
For the two 5 minute blocks I found I was spinning fast throughout.
On the 4x 3 minute 175w blocks I intentially took the first minute at a slower cadence, then the second minute 10 rpm faster, and the third 10 rpm faster still.
It killed the time, and felt like I was doing a decent workout.
Coming to the end of the scheduled blocks, I wasn’t happy with my progress in terms of metres climbed.
Pausing the workout, I did a block of my own, mostly out of the saddle.
Unfortunately when the workout is paused, Zwift won’t tell you RPM or wattage. So I had to guess based on the graph at the bottom. Bit meh.
Finally, having pushed through for an hour, I switched back to the workout and followed the cool down.
During the cool down I had a weird pulsing cramp-like feeling in my right calf. I think I might have over done it on the un-ERG’d section.
It didn’t look like I was going to hit 600m before the workout ended. I was at about 575m with only 3 minutes or so left at a ever decreasing wattage. Again, pausing the workout I made sure to hit the 600m goal before finishing.
Fortunately, even though it’s been a hot one outside today, with the fan on max, and the doors and windows open, this wasn’t too uncomfortable to complete.
Perhaps I should have done a U-turn on both this and the previous rides, and taken the free ~4-5km of downhill to get towards my weekly 100km goal.
Then again, I already feel like I’m cheating on the climb total by doing this as workouts.
I’m somewhat dubious about how much these workouts are helping me break past 195w in my next FTP test.
I feel like they could be at 10 or even 20% more intensity without me feeling much different.
Still, I plan to stick with the schedule, as what the hell do I know?
With this one out of the way, it looks like Zwift had been misrepresenting my current goal as I now appear to only have ~300m or so left to go.
I’ll take it.
How the pro’s do this per day for 21 days or whatever the Tour is is really quite baffling to me.
