Each week Zwift sends me an email summarising my activity for the week. For previous weekly reviews click here.
This week started with some recovery. I felt as though I had a twisting pain in both knee caps, which seems to be a result of having an incorrect saddle position. I think (though am not 100% sure) that this was related to my saddle layback position, coupled with the saddle being a touch too low.
I tried to get a bike fit booked in, but found all the local business I rang were fully booked until early July. I guess it is (almost) “summer”.
Anyway, after hearing how long it would take to get a bike fit sorted, I figured I would just try a few more adjustments myself and see how I got on. Anything to get back on the bike as I was going a bit stir crazy. Fortunately, my new position seems to be a lot better. I ended up raising the saddle by about 2cm, and putting the seat layback more central. I can only go off feeling, but it feels better now. No science involved.
As a result of all this, I had a 5 day break from the bike, and then feeling like I might miss out on my weekly riding goals, ended up doing 1 hour rides for the rest of the week. I enjoyed each ride, in as much a way one can enjoy puffing and panting up a virtual hill.
The first ride of the week was a gentle pootle around Watopia Flat. This was a fine ride to get back on the bike, and I managed to find a really interesting podcast to listen too as I pottered along.
As I rode in the evening on Wednesday, I didn’t want to get up early and get on the bike for Thursday’s ride. As such, I ended up riding in the evening for each of my week day rides this week. I do prefer morning rides, as I tend to feel fresher, but they come with the downside of time limits – have to get off, showered, and to my desk to start work.
On Thursday I was happy enough with my bike setup to put in a harder ride, opting to take on New York’s Knickerbocker circuit, a mostly flat route with one trip up the KOM for good measure.
Weirdly, I got an FTP bump on this ride – from 189w to 196w.
That’s weird for two reasons:
- My FTP was supposedly already 193w.
- The graph below shows this was not my strongest ride to date
After work on Friday, and feeling very fresh indeed, I managed to get in the Innsbruck Forward KOM and some sprints. This ride felt great, and if anything, stronger than the previous day yet without another FTP bump. Booo. Boo I say.
The graph shows this was my strongest ride of the week, and it felt that way too. I really enjoyed this workout, yet managed to sweat so profusely over my phone that I ended up blowing it up. What a disaster. I’ve basically lost all my contacts, but fortunately managed to save all my photos and videos. I need a new phone pronto, as I’m now on my wife’s very old iPhone which is just far too small and pink.
On Saturday I managed to get in a ride up Innsbruck’s Reverse KOM which was again, a great workout, if a little less intense than the day before. This was simply because I just didn’t have the legs. I’m looking forward to taking on Innsbruck again, but I’m glad another map is on rotation for a bit now.
DIY Strava
One thing that has frustrated me with Zwift for a while now is the lack of long term leaderboards.
30 day PR boards are great, but for example, when Innsbruck is on rotation twice a month, unless you’re the kind of rider who is spending hours and hours on Zwift during that time, the leaderboards for personal records tend to be fairly spartan.
Being a total nerd, I have managed to decipher the .fit files that Zwift generate and turn them into useful data. Right now I have a plan to figure out the various segments and then import all my own data, and generate my own leaderboards.
This should be something that Strava can already do. However, I’ve found that’s not the case. So I’m going to have a go at doing it myself, and publishing the results on here. Hopefully these results will be “real time” – as in, auto updating after each ride. I don’t fancy doing all that by hand.
I think that’s it for me on the week. Maybe I’ll get a ride in later on this evening. If so, it will highly likely be a fairly easy structured workout. Not feeling it so much today.