Monday and Friday are usually rest days, but during my Advent of Cycling challenge I’m taking them as short rides. That’s giving me an excuse to check out Zwift’s “Less than 30 minutes to burn” workouts:
Picking the next shortest workout that I haven’t yet done lands me on the Twenty Torch.
As ever with these shorter workouts, they are jam packed full of small intervals. So rather than me bleat on about what is in store for today, it’s easier just to show a screenshot shamelessly stolen from WhatsOnZwift:
Looking at it purely from a graphical perspective, it’s not obvious that the three repeats do get a tad harder each time.
There are two tempo blocks, then a threshold block, and a final VO2 max effort.
The tempo and threshold blocks do increase in intensity by a couple of percentage points each block, but the final effort remains unchanged across the three.
Interestingly, the on-screen workout prompts suggest the final VO2 max effort be taken as an out of the saddle sprint. I didn’t fancy that today, so just hit the target staying seated.
This one is billed as a 2/5 intensity level by Zwift, and I’d say that’s fair.
Had I been better prepared I would have found an entirely Zone 2, or maybe a touch of Zone 3 for today. I’m a little concerned about how sore my right knee was feeling last night and doing any VO2 Max intensity efforts won’t help, even if it’s only for a total of 1 minute out of the 20.
With that in mind I may opt for an hour’s Zone 2 proper tomorrow. Have to see how I feel.
