Indoor Cycling – Weekly Review September 2nd – 8th 2019 2019

Each week Zwift sends me an email summarising my activity for the week. For previous weekly reviews click here.

After a week off Zwift (but not off the bike) last week, it felt good to get in a solid week this week.

All in I did 140km over ~4:45 of riding.

This equated to ~2500 calories of exercise, which was much needed after a week of over indulgence.

If anything this week I feel my pacing could have been better.

I started hard, doing a full Emily’s Short Mix and then continuing on to the top of the reverse KOM on Innsbruck.

This was followed up with a Zwift Academy 2019 workout, and then a supposed recovery ride on the FTP Builder schedule.

This came off the back of a short but hard ride on the Sunday, so effectively four days riding in a row.

Then two rest days. Not what I had in mind. I had wanted to race on Friday afternoon. But perhaps this would have been a bad idea.

Probably the best ride of the week came on Saturday. I opted for a true free ride, and really liked the steady ride where I could do whatever I wanted. And what I wanted to do was keep a consistent cadence. I had planned to stay around 170w, but this didn’t quite work out.

Even so, it felt like this was a good way to spend 45 minutes on Zwift.

That said, according to the average wattage graph, I didn’t work quite as hard as I expected on this one.

Sunday’s ride was another of the Zwift Academy 2019 rides. This time a group ride. This takes me to needing just one remaining group ride or race, and 3 remaining workouts to have finished the series.

I’ve enjoyed the Zwift Academy rides, and would recommend the series to anyone.

That said, they are taxing.

I haven’t ridden this evening for two reasons.

The first is that I kinda messed up my dinner today. I put in ham, pork, cheese, tomatoes, olives, and lots of spinach. But no carbs. I needed rice or pasta in there. Although I felt full by the time I’d eaten it all, by 2.30pm I was really hungry again. Not good.

By the time I got home I just couldn’t be bothered. The thought of doing an hour on the bike just didn’t appeal to me. And my legs didn’t feel particularly great after the group ride yesterday.

In short, I figured I’d take the hint from the Zwift Academy Workouts – have a rest day before doing the workout, if at all possible. So I am. And that means tomorrow evening, all being well, I should hopefully be in better shape to get on the saddle and tackle the next workout – which I think is #6, whatever that entails. Something hard, I imagine.

Regarding the average watts graph, well I think I thought it would be a little better this week. I might have been confusing myself with doing such a harder ride last Sunday and then carrying on for three more days. On the positive side it’s still seeing higher lows, even if I haven’t put in a new higher high for a while. The trend is up and to the right, by and large.

All in all, not a shabby week. I wonder how this one will fare?

Mostly I’m looking forwards to riding Yorkshire, but I think that will be as a regular free ride (hills and all) on Wednesday evening.

We shall see.

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