For this afternoon’s ride I wanted to get in one last outdoor session before the weather takes a down turn. Although, that said, tomorrow is still expected to be another 24c day, but this time… with showers. Fair enough, saves on watering the lawn. Not that I do that, but … well, ya’ know.
Anyway, the alternative to going out was staying in and doing an SST session on Zwift. Something I haven’t done, as best I can recall, since before the Tour For All 2020 started. So that’s over a month ago. That said, I haven’t been on Zwift much at all as of late, anyway, so it’s not so hard to believe.
Last night I went on WhatsOnZwift, plugged in my FTP figure of 225w, and got an updated training plan for the SST session, should I do it. This worked out at:
- 4x 5min @ 215w
- 4x 5min @ 190w
So that’s what I tried to replicate outdoors.
Tonight’s route also took in a little exploration. There’s a butchers I do to out in the sticks, and it’s sat on a country road that I’ve never been further down. Therefore I planned my route to explore that road and see where it goes. Turns out… nowhere, really. Just a bunch of country lanes and wide open fields. Not at all unpleasant, just turns out I wasn’t really missing out on anything all this time.
One nice thing about today’s route was that it was almost completely free of traffic lights. There were a few T-junctions and things like that, but by-and-large I got to keep pedalling and do my best to hit my targets.
Of course, it was harder to stay within the bands whilst outdoors. And I was doing this workout without any guidance from the Garmin – just using the ol’ noggin, and manually counting the intervals.
Worked out pretty well, all things considered. I definitely went too hard in the on-blocks, but found recovering at 190w wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.
Come the end of the ride I managed to hit bang on 30km, and in just over an hour I was pleased with that. Some outdoor rides are a real struggle. This one was windy in parts, and I had to wear the long sleeve jersey due to not having washed the short sleeve one. But with lovely weather, fairly quiet roads (once out into the country side), and having seen more of the world than I knew about when I started the day, all things considered I’d say this one was a winner.
Tomorrow’s ride will almost certainly be Zwift, and almost certainly be a structured workout. Possibly another SST session, just to compare results.
I’ve really enjoyed being out and about on the bike, and so far this week there appears to be a bunch of new job opportunities about. So, hopefully, things all seem to be heading in the right direction.
