Having finally ‘finished’ a personal coding project I’ve been working on for over 10 months at about 20:30 last night, I decided the best way to celebrate was with a 15km / 30 minute spin on Zwift.
This is huge progress for me. I’ve successfully gamified getting fit. Normally my go to reward for finishing a project would be a smash around something like Overwatch, or Battlefield. I get the same stimulation from Zwift as I do / did from playing something on the PC. Maybe not quite GTA levels of fun, but certainly better than most games I’ve wasted my life on.
It would appear that the recent Tour of Watopia: Stage 2 really killed people’s desire to ride the Volcano Circuit. It was quiet. And of the small number of people riding the Volcano, even fewer were doing the Volcano Circuit Reverse.
My aim for this ride was distance. I just wanted to do 15km, and ideally in about 30 minutes or so. No pressure. No killing myself. Just a way to blow off some steam, build up a sweat, and then jump in the bath.
I’ve ridden the Volcano Circuit Reverse / Counter Clockwise once before. I must have done three laps at that time, so here was the existing 30 day PR board:
Even though I’d come on with the intention of not going crazy, as soon as I see those leader boards I get excited and start pushing harder.
Once I saw that count down ticking away, and knowing the end of the lap was in sight, I couldn’t help but put in a bit of effort to try and beat my 30 day PR.
I managed to shave 8 seconds off my previous PB, even if that put me in solid last place on the day. One thing I noticed, thanks to the Tour of Watopia Volcano ride is that the big board with the number on it tells me how many laps I’ve done this session. A nice touch. It counted down in the tour, and then up on a regular ride. Cool.
Another metric I keep loose track of is my distance at 20 minutes. Over the past 7 weeks I’ve been working to get 10km down in 20 minutes or under. Last night I missed this target. Although it wasn’t a target. I was supposed to be “just riding”. Anyway, it’s a sign my legs are in need of a rest.
Not to be put off by my missing the 10km in under 20 minutes, and seemingly complete forgetting my just riding mentality, on the second lap round I tried to keep at or above my FTP.
Pretty happy with this. Not just shaving another 6 seconds off my previous PR, but in being able to cycle for a full lap (almost) at my guesstimated FTP – 153w. I’d already ridden in the morning so was not fresh, yet could still grind out a decent (for me) lap time.
After this lap I was totally bushed. I decided to ride the next lap at a high cadence but low wattage. A blue lap. I don’t know the correct term.
That took me to 30 minutes and more or less 15km. Not bad guessing.
All in all, I was content with my ride and felt like I’d met my own goals for why I’d ridden in the first place. In just two days riding, I was at 66km, which is 2/3rds of my weekly personal goal of 100km. That should be smashed by Sunday.
Again, even though I wasn’t supposed to be pushing, I did OK with my Strava stats. If anything, I pushed a little too hard in my opinion. It’s OK to have a less intense ride, and perhaps the Zwift workout approach is a better way to achieve this.
A big new goal of mine is to find ways to keep my heart rate a little lower. Even at rest my heart rate is high. Bit worrying.
For my troubles, Zwift bumped my guesstimated FTP. I feel pretty good about the accuracy of this figure. I’d be really interested to test myself at an hours ride, in ERG mode, at that figure. I think I could do it, but I would need to go to hospital very shortly afterwards.