Six rides left now in the Advent of Cycling 2022 challenge, and honestly I’m knackered.
Getting on the bike is a chore, particularly when I don’t have a ride in mind. And even more so when it is cold outside.
Typically I would ride around noon, which has given the day some chance of warming up. Not on Sundays, however. This morning I wanted to get my ride in and done, so I could spend the rest of the day nervously anticipating tomorrow. Fun times.
For this morning’s ride I picked yet another workout from Zwift’s Less than 30 minutes to burn selection, opting for Flash Burn.
Honestly there’s so much going on in this workout that it’s hard to really explain in a fairly short amount of words everything that happens.
The gist of it is there are two repeated blocks. I’ve highlighted them below as when I looked at the graph pre-ride, I definitely didn’t see two repeats:
Getting on the bike I was cold and not in the mood. Opening the window in this weather is not thrilling, but I am thankful to myself for doing so after just a few short minutes of riding. Chilly though, when setting off in just my bib shorts.
Like Calorie Crush, Flash Burn starts off with a 4 minute warm up @ 95 RPM. It’s a pretty good way of getting you right into it, but I definitely prefer winding up at my own pace, rather than being SPIN FASTER!’d from the off.
What I tried, and failed with, on this one was to spin at 95 RPM on the easier 40 second segments, then 100 RPM on the harder 20 second segments, and finally 105 RPM on the hardest 10 second segments.
This didn’t work because the segments themselves are simply too short.
By the time ERG has adjusted and compensated for the increased rate of spin, the segment is almost over and it all feels rather pointless.
So I dropped that idea after the first of the six blocks.
The rest of this, honestly, is a fairly run of the mill workout. Very similar to the other Less than 30 minutes to burn offerings in that something is always changing, and you definitely have to pay attention.
If I was feeling fresher I would have opted for something like the FTP Builder session today. But I just couldn’t bring myself to commit to sitting on the bike for an hour.
Picking Innsbruckring as my route, when it came to the end of the scheduled activities I was 3km off completing my second lap. To add some spice I decided to push on a bit of a ramp up and finish fast. That was by far and away the most intense activity done today. How anyone can hold 5w/kg for 20 minutes or more is beyond me.
Anyway, that’s me done for the week. Tomorrow’s a new and interesting day. The cycling continues, but first there is a little… admin to resolve.
