Each week Zwift sends me an email summarising my activity for the week. For previous weekly reviews click here.
Much like last week, the early part of this week was blighted by mechanical issues.
Fortunately, I found a really good local bike mechanic who came to my house and resolved all the problems I was experiencing. Cannot recommend highly enough.
I wish I’d paid to resolve these problems sooner, in all honesty. I must have wasted about 10 hours trying to fix all these issues myself over the last 2 weeks. What a poor use of my time.
Somewhat surprisingly, even with the problems I had, I still managed to meet my two riding goals for the week:
- Ride for 3 hours or more
- Ride 100km or more
On the 100km front, I only just made it. But partly this was due to tackling hilly routes whilst aiming to complete the Zwift Tour De France event. I can’t remember what this entails at the moment – I think it’s 4km of climb, and about 200km or riding – so that’s why I opted for hilly routes even when doing workouts.
Once the bike issues were resolved, I finally did my first ever FTP test.
I mean… sweet Jesus. That was brutal.
And the upshot of it all was that I came out with a 1w lower FTP than previously. Down to 195w from 196w.
There are very valid reasons why this happened, but still, hard to swallow after 20 minutes of probably the hardest sustained physical activity I’ve ever done in my life.
It’s kinda weird that the FTP test ranks so low on the graph. I get why, but still… kinda makes me question the validity of the graph 😀
Off the bike I had a technically successful week. I managed to get my personal leaderboard stuff kinda online.
There are a variety of technical problems with the current implementation. Or as you might say: bugs.
The biggest issues are around the lap markers. For example, the difference between a Volcano Circuit and a Volcano Flat are pretty difficult to determine, as one takes in the GPS points of the other – according to the Strava segment data I’m using. This throws in a bunch of noisy data, but it’s not a bad start.
A downside to this is that Zwift has no open API. Not even for personal data.
Trying to get my data out of Zwift in an automated fashion is a non-starter. Instead, I have a bit of a long winded setup step, which still means getting the data is harder than it really ought to be.
Finally for this week, I really do appreciate all the support I received from doing the FTP test. I think anyone who has done one before will remember their first time for the rest of their lives 😀 I’m feel like I’m now part of a club of hardcore sufferers.
Following Philip’s advice, I’ve decided to stick with the FTP builder workouts, and see where it gets me. I’m really struggling to see how I can give more than I gave on my last FTP test at this point honestly. Seems like 200w is going to be something of a ceiling for me to work at breaking through.