This morning I rode Emily’s Short Mix at my current FTP: 153w. There are two workouts on Zwift that I’ve found by named people which Zwift does a bad job of explaining just who they are.
A little Googling tells me:
- Emily is Emily Mullen, head of brand and marketing at Zwift
- Jon (from Jon’s Mix) is Jon Mayfield, Zwift co-founder
Perfect. One less question I have.
Apparently Emily’s Short Mix is a workout aimed at women. It doesn’t say that anywhere on Zwift, afaik, but I learned that from the linked article above. Personally I find Emily’s Short Mix to be a pretty decent workout.
There’s one thing about Zwift workouts that, when compared to a Free Ride, leave me a little unsatisfied. And that’s the intensity. I don’t think my FTP is quite accurate just yet. I am slowly building up to taking a proper FTP test, but for the moment my FTP is guesstimated by Zwift.
The final three minute effort at 176W definitely got me going. The rest felt like I was working, but not overly so. Not a terrible thing, but I guess I felt like I could have done more.
I worked on a few things in this ride. These were:
- Heart rate – trying to breath deeply, and exhale slowly
- Cadence – aiming from 90rpm in the yellow and red zones
- Upper body – trying to remain as still as possible up top
Somehow or other I messed up one of the recovery zones and only got half a star. I think that’s related to having to stop for a few seconds whilst adjusting my shoe laces.
I find these workouts go quite fast. Even though it’s a 30 minute workout, there’s 6 minutes of build up / cool down to factor in, and two full recoveries. In actuality, there’s more like 20 minutes of effort, and about 6 minutes of hard effort.
After finishing I was at 13.8km for the day. I am now pushing for 15km minimum, so continued my ride for another few minutes, taking myself to 17.1km.
With the four day weekend up ahead, I’m hoping to get at least 3 longer rides in. One of these will be the 2×15 minute FTP rides, I think. Assuming the Tour of Watopia Stage 3 ride doesn’t break me.
All in all, a fun way to get back on the saddle after a rest day.