In my last ride, Zwift Academy 2019 Workout #7: VO2max Development, I injured myself. At the time I thought – and reported – that I’d felt a cramp in my stomach after one of the hard efforts.
It turned out not to be cramp. I think it’s a pulled muscle.
Fortunately, it’s in a fairly unusual place. If that’s a good thing.
Basically the only time I experience pain is if I laugh, or lean heavily to the right.
Even so, I decided to opt for a very gentle ride this evening. Get a few kilometers on the clock, but nothing more exertive than blue zone.
Last time I took on the Zwift FTP Builder Week 6 Day 1 I went up the Epic KOM, and then continued on to climb the radio tower (with the workout in “paused” mode).
Nothing like that today.
Mostly I was alt+tabbed out, watching a King of the Hill episode, in between limited entertaining of children.
Fortunately I experienced absolutely zero pain during the ride. This is good. This morning, a lady at work made me laugh and honestly, there is some potential for pain there if moved in the wrong way.
Even though I wasn’t hugely zoned in on Zwift, I had the companion app open beside me throughout, and was trying to keep a steady cadence.
As ever, this is something I continue to find challenging.
Mostly I was around 85-100rpm.
As I’ve talked about before, between 85-95rpm is the sweet spot, it would seem. Anything slower and the grind is very evident. Anything higher and I bounce off the wattage, then dip back down, then back up, and down… rinse and repeat. Steady is best. But it’s hard.
My current plan is to take another fairly easy ride tomorrow evening.
I’m not yet sure what this will be. Maybe if Yorkshire is on rotation I will opt for a free ride, but aim to keep at a lower intensity than I might otherwise on a free ride.
Another option is to use the true free ride mode and work on keeping a steady green zone cadence for an hour or so.
I’m still hoping / aiming to do the last Zwift Academy 2019 workout on Friday evening.
This may be a touch of wishful thinking. It really depends on how quickly this muscle pain dissipates.
The other thing of note right now is the next scheduled FTP Builder workout is 1.5 hours long. I won’t skip this, but finding a time to ride it – particularly mid-week – is very challenging. Maybe Sunday would be the next best time.
I’m a little concerned that if the time continues to increase on these rides, the entire program is going to take me ages to see through.
There is nothing of huge interest to report from this ride.
The best thing is another 30km of distance on that clock. That’s now 60km for the week. Well on target for my 100km weekly riding goal.
I’ll take a look during the day tomorrow, and see if I can spot a good ride choice for the early evening. I’ll also check the ride schedule. Yorkshire would be nice.
One nice thing about this ride was I rarely saw my heart rate above 130bpm. This is significant for me.
It’s not too long ago that riding around 130w had my heart rate way up high. I know this was slow and steady, but it was at a high cadence. So good signs of longer term progress.
