I had planned on doing a structured workout this evening, but sometimes the plans I make have to go out of the window and I need to get on the bike when I get my chance.
As I only expected to get 25 minutes, I decided to opt for the Volcano Circuit, a largely flat (20m climb per lap) 4.2km route that isn’t overly taxing, and always gives me the sense of having done a good bit of effort.
I have to say that for the first 5km or more, I wasn’t massively paying attention to Zwift on this ride. I had my kids running around near me, asking for a selection of party tracks that they could dance to whilst I got my work out in.
Mostly I was alt+tabbed out to YouTube trying to find tunes that satisfied them. In the end, I opted for Walk This Way by Aerosmith and got on to putting in a lap.
I’d spun at ~90rpm for the first lap which might not have been the smartest move. Even though I wasn’t putting out much watts (by my own standards), I still burned a bit of my good legs for my initial (and likely best) hot lap.
I managed to shave 2 hundredths of a second off my previous best ever lap – a 6:45.96, which rounded up goes to 6:46. This time, with a little rounding down in my favour, I managed to clock a 6:45.94, or just 6:45.9 on the leaderboard.
Not a huge margin of difference, admittedly, but I’ll take it.
As mentioned in this week’s Weekly Review post, I want to make my own leaderboards for all my common Zwift routes. 30 day PR’s are just not good enough for me.
I’ve been looking into the file format that Zwift outputs (the thing that gets sent to Strava etc) and I think I can do it. Looking forward to giving it a shot anyway. But I have a few unfinished things in progress to resolve before taking on another new project.
After giving it my best – which didn’t feel like my true best – I was pretty bushed. The next lap was a slow one. Spin those legs. Find some new tunes. Keep the kids happy.
Nice to get in the 10km under 20 minute marker. And I should hope so too, on a largely flat circuit.
I’d only expected to get ~25 minutes on the bike, but the tea looked like it would take a while longer so I managed to keep on.
There was frankly no chance in heck of me beating G. Erop’s time. If I can’t get a great time down on my earliest laps, there’s very little chance I will do so in a later lap. My fitness is nowhere near that.
And shaving 20 full seconds off my time seems largely unrealistic just now anyway 🙂
Perhaps it would be a better workout to go at as consistent / steady a pace as possible over multiple laps, rather than going all out on one lap and then needing another few laps to recover.
I was a bit disappointed to not get another sub 7 minute lap on the board. Oh well. It wasn’t too long ago that breaking under 7 minutes was a huge achievement for me. Never content for long.
All in all, it was a better visit to the Volcano than my previous attempt. No sickness this time round.
It’s pretty mega to have burned off over 25,000 calories in my Zwifting by this point. Truly incredibly stats for someone who ~3 months ago was sat on his arse doing jack squat.
It was really quiet on Zwift after work tonight. Thanks for the ride on’s to those who sent them 🙂 Much appreciated.
45 minutes on the bike is a great start to the week. I’m hoping to get in a 100km ride in a few weeks time as I’m about to have a much more open schedule. Blessing and a curse, I suppose.
All in, not setting any records (except for that lap time) on this ride. But not bad, overall.
I’d still like to get in a structured workout. I keep saying this. It’s a real time thing though. Hard to get a full free hour to myself when I’m not exhausted or needing to do something else – like take a bath, or go to bed.