Today’s ride was supposed to be the Tour de Zwift 2020 stage 2 race on Innsbruck. But instead I did the FTP Builder Week 9 Day 2 workout.
I’ve no regrets here. There was no way I was up to another race so soon.
However I didn’t want just a full blue ride either. This workout with 5×5 minutes @ 195w, but with 3 minute rest intervals in between seemed perfect. It would give an idea of what Sweet Spot Training sessions are going to have in store, help me get back into the rhythm of that sort of workout, but not be a full on, smack-you-in-the-face experience that jumping head first into SST might be.
The other thing is I have a real life thing to work through at the moment. By day I do IT contracting (software development to be exact), and so roughly every 3 months I go through a period of either renewing (ideally) or leaving and having to find a new role.
I’ve been in my current position for just shy of 6 months at this point, and for the first time in 7 years I’ve been commuting to a job, rather than working from home. This has been killer, and not something I want to continue with. But ultimately it’s meant this last 10 working days has been filled with interviews. And interviews have a habit of messing up my entire days – either through worrying about them, attending them, then waiting for the follow ups. Not fun.
Today was more of the same. Today’s interview was at dinner time, so by tea time – or 5pm(ish) I wasn’t really mentally in the mood for racing. My legs hurt. I wanted a rest. Getting on the bike was good enough.
Anyway, no complaints after this one. It was hard work, and about the limit of what I was up for today. A race would have been a bad idea. My legs haven’t recovered yet from Tuesday night, at least, not to the place I’d want them to be at to be in any way competitive.
Also I kinda messed up. I thought the next race was 9km total. Turns out, nope, it’s 9km per lap. Of which there are two laps.
Good times.
Getting another 689 calories off the 10k January calorie challenge is great. This takes me somewhere around 6k for the month with just under half of the days left to go. Should be on for them pizza socks, unless something terrible happens.
If I’d have had time I’d have pushed on for 50km. Always a bit frustrating to come so close but not hit the half century.
Anyway, my backside was killing me.
Even so, puts me in a good place to make sure I hit both of my weekly riding goals. Maybe those both need bumping up at this point?
Given that I skipped yesterday (again – interviewing) I kinda felt the need to go a bit longer today to make up for that. I’m also considering attending tomorrow night as a race. If not, maybe push it to Saturday, and then take the Sunday group ride up Innsbruck KOM as a slightly less intense push than I might otherwise have done.
Save the best for last today:
I oiled my chain.
Something I’ve been meaning to do for the last few weeks now, after spotting it had become really rather rusty. Yes, my bad. I am always learning about bikes and make no claims to have any clue what I’m doing.
I used some oil from the shed – it was a spray on kind. Said it was good for chains. I got it with my lawn mower I think.
Anyway, long story short, this is the first time I have oiled the chain since I bought the bike near 10 months ago.
Riding tonight was an absolute joy. It was silky smooth, very little noise, and I’m now wondering if I might be able to eek out a few more watts along the way? Who knows.
What I do know is I won’t be letting it get into that state ever again. Whoops.
