Indoor Cycling – Weekly Review December 23rd – December 29th 2019

Each week Zwift sends me an email summarising my activity for the week. For previous weekly reviews click here.

Last week consisted of only three rides. This was primarily due to it being Christmas midweek, and then skipping the harder ride on Sunday.

Prior to Christmas, I started the week with a late lunch in New York, getting in a few hundred metres of climb ahead of the big eat. If I’d had more time I think I would have liked to have done the circuit another time during that ride. Alas, I did not.

Wednesday and Thursday were rest days, because Christmas is a time for family, over eating, and generally not worrying (too much) about having a bit of fun.

On Friday I wanted to make up for two days of eating and drinking too much, so jumped into a 50km ride. This ride was the most fun of the week, taking on Zwift’s Out and Back Again circuit, which features a bit of everything – climbing, sprinting, and long distances.

Having done a 50km ride on Friday, I was feeling a little less inclined to do anything long or hard on Saturday. At this point I still expected to do a harder climb on Sunday, so opted for an active recovery session instead. No regrets, probably the best use of my time that day.

All in all, not a great week’s riding in terms of statistics, but given the events of the week, I’m happy to have met all my riding goals.

As mentioned last week, I’m now less inclined to put too much onus on the average watts graph below. I have included it simply because I have no better metrics – at least, not at the moment. I’m actively hunting for a better graphing tool that shows me some kind of progression that makes sense to me.

About the only useful thing I’m getting from the average watts graph at this point is that the lows appear to be higher lows, and the highs … well, they seem to be roughly trending sideways? I really have no idea how to interpret those stats anymore.

With New Years Eve tomorrow, I’m expecting to either do a very short ride, or perhaps take tomorrow as a rest day with the intention of taking part in Zwift’s century ride on New Years Day. I’m yet to do a century (metric, or imperial) so this could be as good a time as any.

The starting times for the century ride are seemingly either 08:30, or 10:30, with almost double the number of riders registered for the 08:30 start as are currently registered for 10:30. I’m not expecting a hang over, and I’m usually up early enough for the earlier slot, so that seems the more likely of the two at the moment.

I’m again a little disappointed in not getting a decent video recording out of the Tacx Software for the Col de Romme ride. I’m wondering if I’ll get another shot at recording before my trial runs out. Maybe… Even so, not quite sure what settings to change at this point to make things better.

Normally at this point I’d cover things like my plans for the week ahead, thoughts about other stuff related to my cycling (bits of software or hardware, etc), and other odds and ends.

But this week I want to recap some of the best things to happen for me in 2019. So if you’d like to read that, click here.

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