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With a bunch of new goodies to install and try, this ride wasn’t my typical workout. In fact, given the state of my decline in fitness over the last two weeks off the bike, I guess any bike activity is a bonus and I shouldn’t place too much emphasis on performance over the next few weeks.

Saying that, this post is going to be extremely stats heavy, for two reasons:

1. I have just paired up my Garmin Edge 530 with Garmin Connect;
2. I didn’t copy the screenshots I took from Zwift over to this computer after my ride.

Yes, for the second time in a row, and because I am out of habit at this point, I forgot to copy the screenshots from my Zwift computer over to this computer, where I do my write ups. Silly me. I’d go and boot it all back up and copy them, but frankly there are more interesting screenshots to share this evening.

All of these stats, as best I am aware, are taken from the Assioma DUOs, and my Wahoo Tickr.

I had not set out for a steady ride this evening. Instead I was doing a few different tasks:

• Ensuring everything was working as expected;
• Seeing if my cleat position was good;
• Fixing a gear indexing issue.

I should immediately mention that I forgot to press the “start” button on the Garmin until I was over 5km into the ride. Whoops. I guess this is another habit I need to build up. It would be a good feature to have built in that it flashed up on screen: “hey, I’ve detected movement, shall I start tracking this stuff for you?” Alas, it does not. At least, not that I can tell.

Amazingly I seem to have nailed my cleat position much better this time. God knows how badly it was set up before. But I made sure to better account for the heel angle this time, so my feet seem much more naturally positioned as soon as I clip in. Also, I am clipping in slightly further back… it will take a little getting used too, but feels better already.

The gear indexing was a ball ache. I’m not sure how I managed to know that out of whack, but I clearly had.

I now realise my mistake with the Shimano Ultegra R8000 I bought about a year ago and have never used: It has 11 gear rings whereas the one from my stock Allez – a Sunrace CSM66 (I think) – only has 8 gears rings.

What this means, sadly, is that my plan to have one cassette on the Tacx Neo all the time, and the other on my bike wheel for outdoors will not work. It would not be a straight swap.

My options here are threefold:

1. Buy another Ultegra R8000
2. Buy another Sunrace CSM66
3. Just swap the cassette over when going in and out

For now, I’m going with option #3.

I have emailed Specialized (on Monday, no reply yet) to confirm the cassette make and model, as whilst the Sunrace CSM66 is only a tenner, I don’t want to get the wrong thing.

And I don’t want to buy another Ultegra R8000 as I’ve never used the one I have, and at £50+ I’m not even sure it’s worth the money.

My plan is to head outdoors tomorrow if the weather remains as-is. It was lovely and hot this evening, but by the time I’d got all the new gear up and running it was almost tea time. Plus I needed that stationary platform and nearby tools to iron out any kinks.

I’m feeling a lot better this evening. Hopefully tomorrow I feel even better still.

I set my FTP in Garmin Connect at 214w. This is down on the 218w I was at prior to illness. But after this ride the Edge 530 finished by telling me it reckoned my FTP was 213w and I needed to rest for 15 hours.

Frankly I’m amazed I only lost a watt. I feel a lot less powerful and fit than I did, that’s for sure. It feels like I have several hard weeks ahead to regain what I’ve lost, and it’s essential to build that routine back up sooner rather than later.

There’s some really cool data coming off these devices. I’m truly only scratching the surface at the moment. I’m going to dig in further via YouTube and see how to set up a screen with the metrics that matter most to me.

Anyway, things are looking positive. Let’s see how I feel in the A.M, and with a bit of luck, I can get out on the bike on the open roads tomorrow. The one downside is I don’t yet have a jersey to wear. My hope is if the weather remains this nice tomorrow, I’m going to go out in bib shorts and a base layer. I have no idea if that’s a bad idea, but that’s what I’m planning until my jerseys arrive.