Hmm. Things did not go to plan today.
Tried another Wahoo SYSTM workout. This one was a video ride called “Provence: Dentelles de Montmirail”. The premise was simple enough, a trip up a French hill somewhere. Probably in Provence.
Things started well enough. However, about 15 mins in I realised I hadn’t connected my heart rate monitor. Now, at this point I should state I was mid way through the first hard effort. There were two hard efforts in this ride, with the intention of the workout being “sustained efforts”.
The first hard effort was 10 seconds at ~290w, and 50 seconds at 210w. It started easy enough, but after the first two I was sweating and things just got harder and harder.
So no surprises, by the fifth or sixth repeat, I was looking all over to find things to distract me. A missing heart rate reading? Of I went investigating.
Now, the big gripe I have with The Sufferfest / Wahoo SYSTM is the UI is tiny. Like, miniscule.
I ride with a 4k monitor and I’m maybe 8 foot or more away. I need glasses at the best of times. And so trying to add in a missing heart rate monitor? Well… it’s a long shot.
Somehow though, I managed it. And I was overjoyed to see my HR around the 175 mark. I was feeling rough, that just confirmed it.
Whilst messing with the HR setup, I somehow messed up the power / wattage sensor. And after that it all went down hill. Rather than reading my pedals, it began taking power from the Tacx NEO. Now, I didn’t actually clock on to this until the start of the next interval.
The second interval was a 5 minute sustained effort above threshold. I was to hold 258w.
That, in itself, after that first effort was going to be a challenge. That’s about 3.6w/kg for me, I think. Already knackered, and only having had 3 minutes light recovery, I was going to be pushing.
But no. Two minutes in to that I was dying. Hard. Looking at the screen, I couldn’t figure it out. Sure, I expected it to be tough, but this was killer. Keeping 90rpm was taking everything I had. Shortly after my head dipped, and oh, what’s that? I spotted my Garmin reading ~295w…
Well, no wonder I was dying. Sure enough, the app registered one number but my head unit was registering something completely different. Sigh.
There was no way I could see it through. I managed 3 minutes and had to stop. When I got off, I tried several times to sort out the mess I’d made, but to no avail.
What actually really winds me up is in trying to push to keep those numbers, or maybe in the frustration of unclipping several times in short succession, I have really twinged my right knee. Hence my utter frustration and bad mood.
So yeah.
No pictures today. I’m really mad.