Over the half way point through the week and I’m about where I expected to be on this one, quite honestly. I knew it would be a struggle to get as much riding in during this week as I have averaged over the last 8 weeks or so, but I’m definitely feeling the frustration in the lack of riding I’ve been able to do.
With a reduced amount of free time, Zwift / indoor training has once again become an attractive option. How much longer I put my cash into Zwift, it’s hard to say. There are several other compelling options out there. But when I want to do no thinking, just jump on the bike and hit up a workout, Zwift is currently the easiest platform for that, for me.
Given I only had ~30 minutes to ride this evening, my options tonight were fairly limited. I did Emily’s Short Mix on Monday, and today I wanted something different.
I opted for Jon’s Short Mix.
The other choice I had was Lactate Shuttling, which sounded quite interesting and is definitely one I’ve got on my radar for future rides.
The issue I hit on tonight with this one was, as usual, a hazard of ERG mode. Given that I have fallen out of frequent use with Zwift, I had forgotten how to disable ERG mode during a workout.
Pro tip: it’s on the Workout screen on the companion app. I’m sure it used to be one of the options along the bottom of the primary screen in the app, but alas, it was not today.
As such I ended up doing the sprints with ERG on. And Zwift / my Tacx Neo 2 are seemingly unhappy bedfellows when it comes to short, sharp bursts. It’s fine with longer efforts, but if the effort level chops and changes, the Neo sometimes gets its knickers in a twist and doesn’t “recover” in time for the next interval.
That happened during the initial three sprints today.
And as such, by the time I got to the third sprint, the resistance level was insane. Total fail. Very demoralising, also.
I decided I would go for a repeat of the three sprints at the end of the ride, once the workout had finished. I’d do one sprint for 10 seconds at my maximum intensity, then take a 60 second breather, and repeat 3x.
At some point I need to update my weight, as I have Zwift set to 67kg and I’m now between 65 and 66kg, so the figures are still a bit skewed. Anyway, it looks like I did alright in my ten second bursts today. Cracking a thousand watts is not something I’m very good at.
I find these 30 minute workouts frustratingly short. But it’s better than nothing.
I’m hoping to get in another ride tomorrow night – another short one as I’m out for tea tomorrow, hoping to get in one last supper before Preston slips back into local lockdown.
2020 eh? What a mess.
