This morning I took on The Queen’s Highway, one of the 6 different routes available on Zwift’s Yorkshire / Harrogate circuit.
For once, I remembered to mentally note the number of active riders online before joining the map for my ride. There were over 2300 cyclists online for Yorkshire, with a further 1000 (give or take) on Watopia.
It should be said that there was some Yorkshire event in progress this morning, of which I saw 700 riders had joined that event. I was not one of them.
Instead, I opted for the 10-12wk FTP Builder program’s Week 7 Day 2 ride. This wasn’t overly taxing, and was chosen simply as it was a fairly long, yet fairly low intensity ride.
My aim for the ride was to – ideally – reach ~50km, which would take me up to my weekly Zwift 100km riding goal. Now, it should be stated that my 100km riding goal is generic. This is to say, I aim to ride 100km or more across any / all platforms. Up until this week, I have only been riding on Zwift, but earlier this week I tried RGT Cycling for the first time, so my stats are a bit skewed.
As such I really only needed to ride ~30km on this ride to hit my goal, but decided I would see how far I’d ridden by the end of the workout, and if feeling up to it, motor on until I hit the 49km required to take me up to 100km for the week. Of course, I would never stop at 49km when a nice round 50km is just a tad further up the virtual road.
Because of the shortness of the chosen circuit – Queen’s Highway is just 5.7km with 82m of climb – I found my way round the circuit 9 times. Mostly this was done under the structured workout, so I couldn’t see myself setting sprint times.
Interestingly, this route takes in – what I think – is Zwift’s only uphill sprint. Am I wrong on this? I think Richmond’s second hill climb is basically a short, sharp sprint up a steep hill, but that’s classed as a KOM. This is not all up hill, but rather starts up a small gradient, and then levels out a little, then turn the corner to a steeper climb finish. I really like it.
Towards the end of the structured workout I decided I’d go on for the 50km.
This meant skipping the cool down. No big deal. I did see out the last 5 minute interval at 130w.
Once skipped, I saw how performant my sprints had been. Well, pretty much what I expected.
It’s crazy that it’s already been two weeks since I first rode Yorkshire. Time has been flying in September.
With well worked legs, I figured I could get at least one solid attempt at the beating the 30 day PR.
Unfortunately, I just about messed up the sprint start on this one. It was upon me when I was still downing gears, and the initial push for pace was at about 50rpm. It was a real grinding pull, and unfortunately I didn’t do enough to get my speed up.
A 45.01 was good enough for 32nd on the live leader board – a considerably improvement over the previous laps – but 0.21 seconds off my previous best.
I’m not overly fussed about this. After all, I’d just done an hours riding so wasn’t at my absolute freshest. But even so, a little disappointed not to beat it.
I tried again on my second hot lap, but was further off the pace than I’d have liked.
Each lap followed the same shape as you can see on the graph. Starting off in recovery, then building slowly up a couple of little hills, then pushing on a little harder as I regained my breath, followed by a small bump before the sprint.
And of course, then the sprint too which I tried to give my all.
On the third hot lap I decided to take things at a slightly less intense pace.
My theory was that I’d have a “recovery lap” and then try and nail that sprint time on the next one.
Unfortunately I still couldn’t do it.
The one saving grace was that all of this sprinting really took my mind off the 20km grind to reach 50km.
With the goal met, it was almost time to get off the bike.
Just one last go at the sprint… but yeah, no.
Another decent Sunday session in the bag.
I’m really enjoying these longer rides.
Really happy to get close to 900 calories of exercise in the bag after a couple of rest days.
To be honest, my legs really needed the break.
I had expected to ride on RGT Cycling again over the weekend. I was curious to see if the circuits are any busier on the weekends.
Instead, I guess I will try RGT Cycling again tomorrow.
It’s a bit annoying how the stats from RGT Cycling don’t go into Training Peaks.
I’ve started manually tracking my weight in Training Peaks at this point. I’m now down to 70kg. As a pointless goal I’m trying to get under 11 stones.
Currently I sit at 11 stone 1lb 6. I’m not changing my diet or anything, just seeing how far cycling can take me.
I’d quite like to get a race in over the forthcoming week. As ever, I’m thinking Friday afternoon would be a good time. I miss racing.
Until next time.
