After yesterday’s ride, I wanted something a little less intense for today. I figured a longer, yet easier workout would be just the ticket.
As such I opted for Marco Pinotti’s Zwift 12 Week FTP Builder workout, and in particular Week 3 Day 3.
In short, it’s 6 repeated blocks of:
- 7 minutes at 135w
- 1 minute at 100w
In total the ride should last for just over an hour.
My aim for this ride was fairly simple: get some time on the bike, but at a low intensity.
I was wondering how much of a workout this ride would be. Would I even break a sweat? I’m very much guilty of riding much harder than I often intend too when doing free rides. ERG mode is about the only way I’ve found of keeping myself in check.
The initial ten minute warm up seemed to pass by quite quickly. Part of this was because I kept alt+tabbing, trying to find a suitable podcast to listen too along the way. In the end I opted for an Indie Hackers interview.
I chose Watopia’s Flat Route for this ride, for the cheeky reason that I wanted to clock up some distance.
I have a weekly goal of riding 100km or more, and had only put down 30km in total on the week before this ride. However, Zwift being Zwift, there was a bug in there somewhere which meant my ride on Wednesday had not fully registered somehow. I’d had to manually upload the ride to both Strava and Training Peaks, and noticed the stats had not clocked up on the Zwift Companion App. Oh well. I mean, I know I did the ride so wouldn’t hold myself to meeting Zwift’s progress bar. But still… meh.
It was refreshing to do an easier ride. I’m not sure how much difference it makes when in ERG mode, but I kept in a fairly easy gear and went for a cadence of about 95rpm when doing the intervals.
This may have contributed slightly towards making my knees sore.
After the first interval I was comfortable enough. I noticed a single bead of sweat. Oof. Generally nothing my fan and a pint of water couldn’t keep at bay.
In between each 7 minute interval was a single minute at 100w. Those went by remarkably quickly.
I don’t think my heart rate went about 130bpm on this ride. I’ve seen riders keep under 130w on Tour of Watopia stages. Sadly, my ticker doesn’t work like that. By comparison to my usual >160bpms, this was a stroll in the park.
If I’d have been thinking clearly, I would have changed bikes before starting this ride. It makes no difference, as far as I am aware, as there’s no drafting or what not during a workout ride. But still, pootling along at 135w on a TT bike is a bit daft.
I can’t say anything remarkable happened on this ride in general. One thing that was different to usual was the number of Ride On’s I got as I cycled around Watopia. This was in part because anyone I saw with the Zwift Companion App icon next to their name received a free Ride On from me 🙂
But also probably because there are far more people awake and about at night time.
I did get a sweat on during this ride. I was shocked to see how many calories I’d burned when the ride was over. It did feel low intensity, but that high cadence made sure the legs got a good spinning out.
I know it’s low intensity stuff, but that cadence is great for me. Averaging 93rpm for over an hour turned out to be a great workout.
Now here’s the big question:
Why, if my ride was spent in the Blue zone was my heart rate in the Green zone?
This, I do not understand. I thought the heart rate zones would match up to the workout power zones? Am I missing something here? Is this how it works for everyone else, but my heart rate is overly high?
I know this is out of my control, but still, I’m confuzzeled.
Thanks as ever for the Ride Ons. Much appreciated.
I do love the rigidity of a workout graph. My usual free ride graphs are all over the joint. It’s nice to see lovely structure.
Ok, so no awards given for ride intensity. But those calories. However I burn ’em, that’s a win for me.
Not sure what I will ride tomorrow. Likely ride after work, rather than early morning. We shall see.