I took a late lunch today and got in an hour on Zwift. Much needed, as my stress levels are higher than they ought to be.
It feels like an age since my last SST session – and at 6 weeks, it kinda is. This is a result of illness and also a change in schedule during the Tour of Watopia.
Anyway, we are slowly getting back towards normality at this point. At least, in terms of the bike.
I don’t remember the last time I hit Box Hill. As best I am aware, it was some time last year. It used to be my favourite free ride route. My thought process therefore went: why not combine my favourite London route with my favourite Zwift workout?
Well. As it had been ~6 weeks since my last SST session, I can tell you that getting back into the habit of spinning at 95rpm for 40 minutes took a little … adjustment.
By the end of the third set I was feeling it. That’s for sure. But I managed to get through it.
Interestingly, the Garmin Edge 530 told me my recovery time after this session was ~24 hours. This is significantly down on some of my other suggested recovery times (72 hours was the highest I’ve seen), yet this workout felt vastly more productive than pretty much any other ride I’ve done recently.
Whilst not going for a KOM beating pace (how could I, I was ERG’d), I was super keen to see how this climb fared compared to previous attempts.
Amazingly, this was good enough for third place overall. Only 30 seconds off my best ever pace. I reckon I could put in a better time at this stage, but still, getting third overall during a workout was pretty good.
Also coming round to complete the loop I gained some extra XP for completing the Greater London Loop.
Positives from today include:
- Getting back into Sweet Spot Training
- 530 calories in my dinner break
- Averaged 95rpm throughout
- Comparatively low average heart rate – 159bpm average.
A decent session.
With this one out of the way, I’m thinking ahead to tomorrow. Not quite sure what I will do in that session just yet. Ideally tomorrow would be my third weekday ride, and then take a rest on Friday.
I don’t quite think I’m ready yet for a race.
Another possibility is a recovery ride. Boring as they are, just getting an hour on the bike at a low pace is “nice to have” once a week.
Aside from the “on the bike” stuff, I have a bunch of high priority work that has been created due to a failure on one of my most important servers and that is consuming a bunch of both time and energy. The stress that creates is relieved by bike riding, but only to a point.
Hopefully I’ll find a solution to this problem before it escalates – as worse case this is going to take down this site, and a bunch of others. And that would not help my blood pressure.
OK, enough computers for one day.
Let’s try again tomorrow.
