I stayed up too late last night. Stayed up late, and drank beer (though not in that order).
The end result of that is I woke up late, and tired this morning. Overslept by 2 hours. On a Saturday. I know, I know… no rest for the wicked though. I have an escape plane in motion from my wretched day job and Saturday’s are prime time to hatch that plan.
But anyway, the upshot of this I didn’t get to finish my must do tasks until after 2pm. Usually I’d do my Zwifting between noon and 2pm at the latest, as I really don’t like doing workouts later in the day anymore.
In the end I had to pull myself away from the PC, had my lunch and then took the kids round to see the family as per. That meant when I finally did get home and on the bike it was gone 5pm, and I couldn’t be ages as it would then be tea time.
Family life, eh?
Well, all that is to say I ended up doing a shorter workout today. The original plan had been for an hour’s Zone 2. Instead I picked an intensive but short workout I haven’t tried before, the Sevens workout.
This one is pretty easy to explain.
It’s two blocks of:
- 7 x 30 seconds @ 120% FTP at 110rpm
- 7 x 60 seconds @ 65% FTP at 85rpm
In between there is a 2 minute recovery down to 40% FTP… that was probably my favourite part.
My take on this one is it’s a fairly intensive workout, for the given time period.
Compared to some of the shorter workouts I’ve tried from the Less than 30 minutes to burn category, this one is higher intensity for sure. Those intervals start to hurt, combining the high RPMs with the anaerobic efforts definitely gets the sweat going.
Interestingly though, with the one minute breathers between the tough stuff I was able to get my heart rate back to normal for each effort. On that front, things could have been much tougher if the recovery blocks had been shortened to say 45 seconds, or less.
All in then, I felt like this was a good use of the time I had. Not overly taxing, but equally not a cheat day either.
A good one for the time crunched.
And I have read today that in the forthcoming January Zwift Patch, aside from a whole new map (Scotland / Glasgow) we are going to be getting many more < 30 minute workouts. Maybe the metrics chart at Zwift HQ has gone through the roof since the 1st of December 🙂
Good to see you back, I’ve missed your reports!
I’ve also been using the Sevens interval session when I’m a bit time-crunched.
At the moment, my biggest challenge is that it’s sub-zero in the garage, which makes completing my early morning Zwift session something of an exercise in will-power!
Thanks Robert 🙂
My pain cave is my office which has its pros and cons. We’re hit with -3c at the moment in Preston, so opening the window feels essential for the workout, but then the office is freezing for a while after. Then I get shouted at for wasting all the heating I’ve spent all morning paying for.
Sadly not lucky enough to have a garage… space here is at a premium. I keep the bike on the turbo, but I tip it upwards so it’s stored vertically when not in use. Probably no good for it whatsoever, but I saw it on GCN’s hack / bodge segment and stole the idea 🙂