Yesterday I said I wanted to either get outdoors, or do a Sweet Spot Training session for today’s ride.
Congratulations then, as I did neither.
At 11am, at the start of my regular Wednesday morning meeting, I looked outside and saw lovely dry pavement. By the end of the meeting, a harsh shower had passed through and the ground was soaked. Boo.
Loading up Zwift I was all set to do the SST session but just so happened to glance at what was currently the Workout of the Week, and rather than it being a 30 minuter as I expected, it was ~53 minutes and looked decently varied.
Had I know it contained 10 minutes of hard grind at low cadence I might not have clicked it so quickly…
This workout was provided by Maize Wimbush, Junior rider for TWENTY24 Pro Racing and the first African American Junior girl to win a U.S. National Junior Road Championship title. Hear what she has to say about today’s workout – I chose this workout because it helps me accomplish getting used to high power. There are a handful of intervals in this workout with the recovery being a not too high, not too low power. This helps with future recovery time!
Maize Wimbush’s Windup workout on Zwift
Given the choice, I would always opt to do my intervals at high cadence. My preference is for 95rpm, don’t ask me why.
Much like getting out of the saddle, I rarely do low cadence work. So whenever I do either, I find it harder than I might if I practised more. Well, today I got to practice those low cadence efforts.
In typical Zwift workout fashion, this one starts with a fairly decent warm up. There’s a ramp into endurance, followed by a few 1 minute drills, just to get the legs ready.
Then the fun starts.
Considering the two back to back 5 minute reps were at a Tempo power zone, I figure I wouldn’t find 5 minutes @ 207w, followed immediately by 5 minutes @ 227w to be that gruelling.
But force me to do the first interval at 80rpm, and the second at 75rpm and my legs were groaning hard.
There’s something about that grinding diesel torque type of power generation that I find easier outdoors than I have ever done on the turbo. This one felt like a slog.
I’ll be honest, I was closer to the actor who plays Mace Windu than Maize Wimbush with the profanity towards the end of that set.
Fortunately the second half of the ride was easier from my point of view.
We repeated the initial set of 4x 1 minute @ 222w / 95rpm, with off blocks of 160w / 85rpm. That was definitely refreshing for the legs.
And then the 4x 1m 30s at 255w / 100rpm was interesting.
The first rep really hurt. I started fine, but with 20 seconds left to go I was a bit concerned how I might make it through 3 more reps. Such was the burn.
But somehow or other, I felt absolutely fine in the three following reps. Really, no problem. Bizarre.
Anyway, it was a decent workout. I enjoyed it. There was a lot of text to read – always good for the screenshot, though less good for the size of my blog backups – and it felt varied enough to pass the 53 minutes by super fast. In fact, the only drag was the final 5 minute cool down, which seemed to take an age.
Disappointed not to have gotten outdoors, and I do feel like I kinda wimped out of doing the SST session today. If the weather is as bad as it’s forecast (snow + wind) tomorrow, then SST it will have to be. No excuses.
If you’re looking for a decent workout I can recommend this one. Particularly if you need to practice your cadence drills, or ‘prolonged’ low cadence work.
And good luck for 2028 Maize Wimbush!
