Sister Bliss-ter

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Well, what a fail.

Lately I’ve been going on long-ish walks rather than do recovery rides. The average length is about 7.5km, and I’m rocking some new walking boots so I don’t mind going in the filth.

The problem is, my feet are so lovely and soft, that when I wear shoes for any length of time, my heels and soles blister like crazy. No surprises then, after another long walk yesterday I’ve got blisters all over the show.

Anyway, I was going to go out today. Actually, I said I was going to do an FTP Test. But because we had only one slice of brown bread left this morning, by dinner time I wasn’t feeling like I’d do much good. Also the weather was nice, so I wanted to go ride up Jeffrey Hill.

But no.

As soon as I put on my outdoor shoes I could barely walk. I figured it might not be so bad once I got pedalling, but it turns out that yes, it was still bad. Quite uncomfortable, I dare say.

Fortunately, my indoor shoes are a larger fit and whilst they rubbed, they were nothing like as bad. The right shoe was the worse of the two, probably because my right foot is slightly larger. Anyway, it meant I could at least ride, albeit not at any silly intensity. Just the excuse I needed not to do the FTP Test.

I opted for Zwift’s workout of the week, and whacked on a podcast to get me through. Surprisingly it was over 20 minutes done when I first properly looked at the clock. Result.

The workout itself, entitled A Gentle Reminder, was a fairly typical Zwift Workout Of The Week. Which is to say that it wasn’t too intensive, and featured more on-screen prompts than a typical workout.

The gist of this one was four intervals of three repeats:

  • 1 x 1 minute @ 75% FTP / 85 RPM
  • 1 x 1 minute @ 90% FTP / 85 RPM

Repeat three times for each interval.

This workout will ebb + flow from Endurance to Tempo 1-minute at a time working from 75-90% of your FTP. You will repeat this 6-minute set 4 times throughout the 40-minute ride. This is a great way to keep your aerobic system going while maintaining a moderate heart rate.

Zwift’s A Gentle Reminder workout

The hardest part was keeping that steady cadence of 85 RPM, which is about 5 RPM lower than where I’m comfortable in ERG mode.

Between each interval was a 1.5 minute recovery block down to 55% FTP, but even that wanted the 85 RPM adhering too. Boo.

Overall though, a fairly straightforward workout that didn’t leave me too sweaty (I did sweat), never too tired, and only moderately feeling it in those blisters – particularly the right foot.

I’m kinda tempted to do a little something tomorrow now also, especially if my heels are feeling less sore. But I always say things like that the night before, and then on the day I get very lazy and think nah, I deserve the rest.

Anyway, bit disappointed in myself for finding excuses not to do the FTP Test. Truthfully I was looking for a get out of jail free card – the lack of bread, the ride outdoors, anything really rather than suffering for 20 hard minutes. But the blisters are genuinely bad enough that I would have suffered even more than usual. If that is indeed at all possible.

6 thoughts on “Sister Bliss-ter”

  1. Like you, I always looked for excuses not to do FTP tests! I’ve been using TrainerRoad training programmes to set out my trainer sessions, and it now has some AI system that continually monitors and adjusts the programme. But most importantly it can estimate FTP via analysis of completed (and, I guess, non-completed) workouts, which is a bit of a boon for me.

    Reply

    • I had a bit of a routine going with the FTP tests around September last year, where I was doing them every week. It sounds horrendous, but you kind of get used to them. And the benefit is if you get a bad session in, it’s not that long till you do another. I’ve kinda swapped that approach now to racing, but that’s not quite the same. I do want to get it done before the start of the Tour of Watopia though.

      The Garmin headunit also has some kind of auto-updating FTP figure. I honestly don’t think I’m going to improve on ~245w right now. I worked it out that I need to sustain 260w for the 20 minutes to get that figure, and that just sounds awful. I might go out and blister my feet again to keep avoiding it.

      The main thing is we get on the bike and turn the pedals over, right? Beyond that it’s just a bonus.

      Reply

      • Once my racing season gets underway (mid March with a club ’10’), I should get a good idea of where my winter training has got me. I’ve been very diligent in following the plan, except at Xmas when I had a hideous cold that knocked me sideways for a fortnight.
        This off-season I’ve been a bit more serious about TrainerRoad than in previous years.

        Reply

          • Nice! All the best with it.

            Zwift racing is my favourite part of their whole platform. It feels like the best test of all the other hard work / workouts, and is in itself a solid ~30 minute workout.

            The two main things with Zwift races is they tend to start hard – not at a sprint, but well over threshold to keep with the front bunch. For me that means around 2x FTP (seated) for ~15 to 30 seconds, and then it settles.

            The other thing being that the categories are too wide, so set your expectations accordingly. B-cat is 3.2-4.0w/kg. I’m somewhere in the middle of that range, and so my results are always somewhere in the middle of the overall finishing places.

            I would highly recommend trying out the racing scene though, especially the bigger Zwift ‘official’ events like their Race Scotland series underway currently. There are some TT events too, but the only one I have done was part of a Zwift event a few years ago – https://cyclingindoors.co.uk/giro-ditalia-tt-challenge/

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