Each week Zwift sends me an email summarising my activity for the week. For previous weekly reviews click here.
This week consisted of four rides, which is one fewer than I’d have liked, but four better than it looked like I might do in the first half of the week.
During last week’s second Bambino Fondo, I made the mistake of raising my saddle and adjusting my left cleat, then doing 50km+. This turned out to be a bad idea as I ended up with pain in my left knee which has lasted pretty much for the last 7+ days at this point.
Deciding to take a rest for the first few days of the week seemed smart, and then I’d re-assess how I was feeling after Tuesday. As usual, when not riding, by the end of Tuesday night I was feeling frustrated at having not done a ride and I was itching to get back on. That said, my knee was quite painful and riding would have been a bad idea. Wednesday night came and I was even more keen to get back on, but it still didn’t feel like a good idea.
By Thursday I was equal parts frustrated and raring to go, and so decided a lower intensity ride would be the perfect way to resume riding. This turned into a 50km ride, partly because I’d opted for a longer FTP Builder session of 2x25minutes, but also partly because I ended up messing up and skipping half way through the second interval, turning the remaining portion of my time into a free ride.
Having had three days off the bike, and then come back on and whilst not perfect my knee was feeling “good enough”, I took Richmond as a free ride on Friday aiming to put down as many kilometers as I could, without going crazy. As ever, I went hard on both sprints and both climbs. Not full gas, but definitely more intense than was smart to do so coming back from injury. I’m fortunate that I didn’t cause myself further problems in doing this.
On Saturday I again opted for an FTP Builder active recovery style session, thinking ahead to the following day with the start of the Tour De Zwift 2020. Nothing major for this ride, just burned a bunch of calories and ended up missing a real world commitment due to being late on the bike. You win some, you lose some.
Sunday was what this week was all about. The start of the Tour de Zwift 2020. It’s been a good long while since the end of the Tour of Watopia, and that had been a fantastic introduction to both Zwift and these huge group rides. With over half a year’s regular riding under my belt since then, I was definitely eager to see how both I, and Zwift had progressed.
In terms of attendance figures, the difference was massive. At most, I remember the Tour of Watopia events being around the 2500 riders mark. This first event started with over 4500 riders registered. This shows a staggering amount of growth for Zwift over the last year, and I’m happy for their continued success.
From my point of view, I was significantly less nervous going into this ride than I had been on my first Tour of Watopia event. By that point I’d never done anything longer than 30km, nor done any significant climbing. And with a 10am start, this year I even got a nice lie in bed for a change.
Aside from getting to this ride quite late, all things considered, once I was into it I found I didn’t quite perform as well as I would have liked. Perhaps I went a little too hard in the first 10km, and perhaps I suffered mentally from almost constantly and consistently falling back by about 200 places during the second third of the ride. However I look at it, it was first and foremost a solid workout, but a somewhat disappointing ‘race’ performance.
One of the cool things about the Tour of Zwift 2020 is that each event consists of both a group ride, and a race. You can do either to gain credit for that particular stage (of which there are 7 stages), though I’m hoping to do both. How realistic this will be depends entirely on the start dates and times, but I am able to attend the first race – 2 laps of London Classique – on Tuesday.
Whilst the week started in a slow and frustrating fashion I’m happy with how it ended. 155km ridden, 914m of climb, and 2500 calories burned. This puts me over 5000 calories burned for January, which with less than half the month gone, has me ahead of the curve for meeting the 10,000 calorie challenge.
I’m really looking forwards to the first race of the Tour of Zwift 2020 on Tuesday night. Given that it’s only starting at 5pm, and that it’s only 16km or so, this should mean I can get in a decent warm up ahead of time, and then the race itself won’t last an overly long time either. Perfect for me.
In other news I’ve found out there are some additions to RGT Cycling that are interesting to me. There are some new routes available, and it looks like there’s been a pretty big patch release that I’m looking forwards to checking out. This will have to wait until February, given other commitments at the moment.
I’ve got some cycling hardware issues to resolve. I might end up getting a professional to give my setup a tune up. I’m not convinced it’s set up properly anyway at this point. I’m also strongly considering a professional bike fit. I’m wondering if I could eek out another 10w or so if I had a properly tuned setup. Maybe that’s wishful thinking.
I’d also really quite like to upgrade my saddle. I have my eye on a Specialized saddle, but it seems the only way to buy this is from the Specialized site itself, or from a store like Evans. I’m not against this, and it would be nice to actually have a look at it in person first. But I have all these Amazon vouchers from Christmas, and I wish I could use them to buy it instead!
OK, so all in all, I managed to salvage a week that could have gone down the drain. Things are still on track, and ideally later this week I’ll get in my first Sweet Spot Training session. I’m more nervous of that than I am this forthcoming race!
Until then, have a good week.