Each week Zwift sends me an email summarising my activity for the week. For previous weekly reviews click here.
This previous consisted of two (and a half) higher intensity rides, and two easier / recovery rides. It also saw me gain weight from 11 stone 1lb, to 11 stone 5lb. Not really sure how that happened.
The majority of the FTP Builder rides continue to be used almost as if they are recovery rides. I look to them when I want an easier ride, or a ride I don’t need to think too much about. From the average wattage graph below, you can clearly see that these are typically low intensity activities.
I might have expected to see Tuesday’s The Wringer ride being at a higher intensity than Wednesday’s Emily’s Short Mix. In hindsight I did enjoy The Wringer more than the name might suggest. It was a solid workout, no denying that. I liked the short intervals, and the shortening recovery between each block.
The week started well in so much as me putting in rides, but by the end of Wednesday night’s ride, I had only covered 50km for the three rides in total. As seems to be the case currently, I ended up taking Thursday and Friday as rest days, leaving myself with 50km to cover over Saturday and Sunday.
With Saturday’s FTP Builder ride being on the shorter side (in terms of ride time), I was still shy of my weekly 100km riding goal by the start of Sunday morning’s ride.
Even so, I opted to take Sunday as more of a climbing ride than an attempt to cover as much distance as easily as possible. And I was glad I did, as I really enjoyed the Everything Bagel route. I think, at this point, the
On the subject of climbing, I think this is probably the best use of my time on Zwift. I like sprinting, but I’m never going to be a record setter in this category. Heck, I’m never going to be a record setting climber either, but in terms of “bang for your buck” time spent in a workout, going up hill appears to be the best way to improve my overall fitness.
With this in mind, I’m thinking at least one ride per week for the forseeable future should be a climbing ride. 30-45 minutes of climb, something akin to the Innsbruck KOM, needs to be on my schedule each week.
As I mentioned in the Everything Bagel ride report, one of the reasons I find myself starting to like New York more and more is that the climbs are steep, but short. 12% doesn’t seem so bad when it only lasts for a couple of minutes.
I have to admit that having seen my weight increase over the past two (?) weeks has been a little disappointing. I foolishly thought with doing ~2500 calories of work on the bike each week, I could offset eating too much at dinner time.
Switching to working at an office versus working from home has had numerous negative impacts on my life. Predominantly this has been around losing ~1.5 hours each day commuting. But having to get up at 6am and then drive somewhere at which I’m not particularly happy hasn’t been fun. Fortunately I don’t plan on doing this for too much longer (end of February is the target).
Getting up at 6am, having a couple of slices of toast, and then not eating until midday has had me feeling really hungry by about 11.15. From this point on, my stomach is often growling, and by 12:15 when I stop for lunch, I’ve convinced myself I need to eat a ton of food.
What this has meant is that I’ve been over packing my lunch box. Nothing immediately unhealthy. I have a salad, but I realise I’ve been putting in too much cheese. I’m guessing these salad boxes are in the region of 1500 calories or more, and so any bike work is been completely negated by my diet.
Fortunately I’ve realised this fairly early on, and have rectified this starting today. This means a lighter lunch box, but I don’t expect to feel any less full as a result. Time will tell (I’m writing this in the car pre-lunch on Monday).
I’d really like to get my weight back down towards 11 stone, as I feel like I’ve wasted a good deal of the hard work I’ve been putting in these last few months.
All this said, weight loss has never been my primary driver for using the bike. I’m comfortable with my weight being anywhere within the 11 stone range, but would ideally keep this closer to 11 stone than 12.
Regarding average watts, this week I’ve been reviewing the graph a little more closely than in previous weeks.
It’s clear to anyone that the initial rides were a constant improvement in fitness. And I’ve always expected to hit a plateau at some point. I’ve mentioned before that hitting this plateau before reaching an FTP of 200w or greater has been a source of disappointment.
What strikes me this week is that my rides back in May 2019 were seemingly consistently stronger than my average ride as of the last ~3 months.
I put some of this down to switching to structured workouts (e.g. the FTP Builder series) versus always doing free rides. And I’m aware my early rides consisted of plenty of out of the saddle riding, typically whilst aiming to beat my time to 10km.
I’m thinking now that maybe because these rides were often fairly short (~30 minutes), I was going harder on average. But crucially most of these rides were early morning. I definitely feel that I experience a drop off in ability to perform later in the day, but there’s very little chance of me getting up at 5am to get in a ride before leaving the house at 6.20am on a weekday.
Perhaps I should do a purposefully short ride, 30 minutes or so, and really go for it. See how quickly I can hit that 10km target, get out of the saddle, and do a “road” FTP test, like the good old days.
On the plus side, the overall trend in performance is still ticking upwards, albeit at a very much decreased velocity.
Having thought about it whilst writing this, maybe my problem is a lack of a specific goal. What am I trying to achieve on the bike? I’m thinking any exercise is better than none. I’m happy that this blog has helped me spot that weight gain. But am I trying to do something more here? I really have no idea currently. Something to ponder whilst I ride this week.