I was left feeling frustrated on Sunday when I rode the Greater London Loop, but didn’t fully complete the circuit. Today, I corrected this mistake.
I wasn’t really sure what I was hoping to achieve this morning. Just a regular 20 minute ride would suffice. I also didn’t realise it would be London day on Zwift. Always a bonus. I was expecting to do another couple of circuits of the Volcano Loop.
London is easily my favourite map. I recognise some of it. I’m sure there’s a downhill section as I go past Parliament… quite fitting. Here’s a snazzy shot of the Mall:
One of my goals so far is to cycle 10km in (ideally under, but will settle for exactly) 20 minutes. And this morning, I found myself at 8.5km with about 2.5 minutes left to go. I pushed and pushed, but was met with a 2% – 3% gradient… those sneaky Zwift map designers, making things all like the real world. Oof.
Unfortunately, I was 0.1km off by the time 20:00 minutes ticked around. I would say I went for it at 90% of my maximum remaining capacity. I am really conscious of “blowing out”. I’d much rather ride every day at a steady pace, than go hell for leather one day and then need two days to recover.
After pushing hard to make it to 10km, I eased off significantly, a bit gutted I hadn’t made it, but still happy with my overall performance. A few days back I could never have come this close, so really happy with this progress.
I must have been doing better today as the little man in the top right of the ride report gave me a solid “OK!”. That’s a first.
I really like this screen above, and wish I could access that info without pausing. That said, I do not stop for my 20 minutes session, so only see this at the end anyway. It would be nice to see some of these “best ride” vs “current ride” stats on screen, whilst riding.
From the Strava graph it is really obvious as to where the “big push” was. Immediately after missing my 20minute goal, my cadence dropped through the floor. I’m pretty sure I stopped pedalling. Hard to remember. I was very tired.
Again today I tried my technique of a minutes hard pedalling, followed by a minutes rest. Not every minute on, minute off, was quite so regimented. But I think there is something to that approach.
The big question I have at this point is – is my Weighted Average Power the approximate equivalent to an FTP test result? One to look into.
Finally today, a screenshot to show all the different integrations that Zwift has / allows, of which I only use Strava at the moment.
It’s a bit hard to see (though you can click to zoom in), but Zwift integrates with:
- Strava
- Training Peaks
- Today’s Plan
- Map My Fitness
- Garmin
And maybe some more. I haven’t checked out any other services than Strava at the moment.
From a software developers point of view, I was a bit disappointed to find that Zwift’s developer API is no longer publicly available – due to GDPR of all things.
Instead, it is possible to upload your data – as I do – to Strava, and then use Strava’s API as a “proxy” for Zwift. I’m quite keen to have a play with this. Yes, I am a massive nerd.