I would be telling big fat lies if I said, at this point in the Advent of Cycling challenge, I was not feeling flat. Yes, it’s a real slog lately to get on the bike. About the only saving grace is being able to do the rides during my dinner break.
For today I decided I would let myself off doing the usual Thursday’s hour(ish) ride, and got for a shorter, high intensity workout instead. Sure, it doesn’t cover the same distance, nor anywhere close to the same calories… but I’ll be doing something similar again tomorrow, and I’m happy enough to add the two together and count them as one workout.
For today I picked from Zwift’s Less than 30 minutes to burn category of workouts, and opted for a new one on me: Calorie Crush.
For a short workout (just 25 minutes), there sure is a lot of variation in the five intervals.
Fortunately, for the purposes of explanation, they are five repeats of the same thing.
That would be:
- 20 seconds @ 90% FTP
- 20 seconds @ 100% FTP
- 20 seconds @ 75% FTP
- 20 seconds @ 95% FTP
- 20 seconds @ 105% FTP
- 20 seconds @ 80% FTP
- 20 seconds @ 95% FTP
- 20 seconds @ 110% FTP
- 20 seconds @ 85% FTP
Rinse and repeat, 5 times, with a 1 minute breather between each interval taken at 60% FTP.
What I would say is that even for a short workout, this one seems to last quite a while. I put that down to you working from the off – no time to slack today, the second you set off it’s asking for 95 RPM… SPIN FASTER!
Whilst I was never overly sweaty, I definitely didn’t feel like this was one of the easier ways to spend 25 minutes on Zwift. I felt like I was always working.
One way I judge the intensity of a Zwift session is to look at the calories burned over the course of 30 minutes. If I’ve hit >400 in under 30 minutes I know it’s a higher intensity ride. And obviously, less than that and it’s an easier ride. It’s not scientific, but it seems to be the case.
Now this ride was only 25 minutes, but in that time I hit 291 calories in Zwift… it’s always different between Zwift and Strava, but let’s take the Zwift figure. Maths time:
- 25 minutes * 60 seconds = 1500
- 30 minutes * 60 seconds = 1800
- 291 calories burned / 1500 = 0.194
- 0.194 * 1800 = 349.2
In other words, at the same intensity but over a 30 minute workout, this one would have come in at 349 calories. So whilst it felt fairly intense, it was comparatively on the easier side.
What that says to me, not that I needed telling, is that I am hecking fatigued.
I think I’ll opt for something similar tomorrow. Honestly, I’m not sure I could face much more right now.
Hopefully I’m feeling fresher on Saturday. Spending all day working in a cold office is not helping.
Oh, and lastly today, if you haven’t yet watched it / started watching, I’d really recommend the Zwift Academy 2022 series from GCN. It’s still releasing episodes at the time of writing, but last years series was great and this is basically more of the same.
