Each week Zwift sends me an email summarising my activity for the week. For previous weekly reviews click here.
A big win for me this week was in switching from riding later in the day back to riding earlier in the morning.
I feel better for getting my exercise in as soon as I wake up, and it generally sets me up to have a more productive day than I would otherwise. Also, I don’t have the nagging “you must get on the bike” feeling with me all through the day. And I don’t end up riding after a heavy tea. So, all round, it’s a win.
As a sign of progress this week, I managed to put out over 600w on a couple of rides. To some, this figure may come easy. For me, it’s been 3 months of hard work. Don’t believe me? See every post on this blog up until now 🙂
On my very first ride on Zwift I managed to put out ~400w. I was absolutely bushed after doing so, but frustratingly had the Wahoo TICKR on upside down so didn’t get my heart rate. It would have been interesting to compare.
What I need to work on is prolonging the length of time I can sustain a max wattage effort. Right now, about 250-300m is about as good as I can go. I have a personal goal to push this to 500m. Fuego Flats sprint is a good place to measure this.
I had a weird mix of rides this week. On Tuesday, my first ride of the week, I was all over the place. This was when I decided not to ride after an evening meal any more, if I can at all help it.
It’s not so bad riding before eating / straight after work, or even, early in the afternoon as I do on Saturdays. But after 7pm, and especially after eating, forget it.
Thursday, two rides on Friday, and then Fuego Flats on Saturday afternoon, all good rides for me.
The chart shows all were decent performances, even if I was trending marginally downwards with each ride. Generally they were consistent. Mentally, breaking through the 190w average over 20 minutes is still a tough one for me, and I’ve seen no guesstimated FTP gains for a while. I’ve even been expecting a drop.
Easily my favourite ride of the week was World Bicycle Day: Racing the Sun on Sunday. The graph shows this as being a fairly easy ride by previous standards, but it felt just as hard work as the previous days for me. I’m not sure if this was due to tired legs, or the Buffalo Bike, or what. Even so, I really enjoyed it.
I have a couple of things in mind for the week ahead:
The first is to switch to the Time Trial (TT) bike. This would give a better reflection of my own personal performances, without any benefit from drafting others. Bit of a hardcore moment, but I think it’s a good move for my own personal fitness.
Secondly, I’d really like to get another 50km+ ride in next Sunday. Whether this involves a big climb, I’m not sure. I prefer to ride longer distances without covering the same circuit multiple times, and in order to do that, it probably means going up and down something fairly sizable.
Overall though, although I had a very shaky start, I’m happy with how the week progressed.