For tonight’s ride I opted for another blast of the Sweet Spot Training (Short) Zwift workout.
Typically I find when I know I have a harder workout to come home too, I do over think it on the drive home. And then when I get home, get changed, and get on to the bike, things aren’t quite as bad as I thought they might be.
After Sunday, I was feeling a little hesitant about tonight’s harder ride. For sure, I still don’t feel fully recovered from that climb, yet.
I’m feeling it in my the tops of my thighs predominantly at the moment. It’s nothing serious, but there’s definite fatigue.
I find the SST session to be a fairly easy one to get stuck into. The harder blocks are enough to make me focus. There’s no mucking around during these intervals. I have to concentrate on turning the pedals and keeping a consistent cadence.
Typically, for cadence, I opt for 95rpm. Gearing doesn’t matter, as ERG takes control.
With regards to cadence, according to Strava I averaged 96rpm on this ride today. Happy with that.
I’m definitely finding that the higher cadence during workouts is helping when doing the free ride climbs on Sunday.
For sure, I get nowhere near 95rpm on those climbs, sadly. Not even in the easiest gear.
But the act of fairly rapidly turning the pedals over is definitely having some positive benefits on my body. Also, ERG is just easier if you spin faster. So there’s that 😉
Christmas Trees
It would appear Zwift’s latest update added in yet more route achievements. And more importantly:
Christmas Trees.
Yes, subtle though they are (I would have missed them had I not been on the same route 3x this ride), Watopia has had some festive lighting added to the trees. But only one small set of trees. Maybe more stuff “unlocks” each day. I don’t know-ho-ho.
I’m already thinking ahead to tomorrow’s ride at this point.
As mentioned, my legs are feeling sore. I’ve tried the foam roller, but no major impact there. I do foam roll after every ride now. Got to love those cracks.
But part of me is saying take a rest. Two days, maybe three. Do a bit of recovery.
And then another (louder) part of me is saying ffs, suck it up, it’s only an hours exercise.
In truth I’ll probably hit the bike. It’s good for me. It needn’t be a super high stress session. Maybe I could opt for the Tacx London City ride. Maybe that could be my new Thursday night thing?
It would be a free ride, as such. I’m not quite sure how long that route is. Last week’s city ride was great, but it took a little while longer than planned.
When it came to the end of the session today I was at about 27.something kilometers done.
I decided to motor through to 30km.
What I did at the end was stick to 95rpm, regardless of what the terrain was.
As I was on my route around Watopia’s mostly flat Flat route, I hit that little kicker out of the tunnel and maintained 95rpm. That’s why the wattage spikes below.
Once I’d hit 30km I was off the bike. That’s over 60km for the week, so puts me on target to hit the usual Zwift 100km even with two Tacx rides for the week.
Also, 535 calories. Happy with that. I mean, with the ever declining size of multipack chocolates these days, that means I can have… well, at least one bar a night.
Most of all on this ride I’m happy with the consistency of my cadence. I still haven’t got it fully dialed in, but I’m slowly but surely getting better at being consistent at hitting a set figure for prolonged periods during these sessions.
One mistake I used to make was varying cadence at the end of each interval. Now I just keep a cadence and let ERG figure it out.
OK, so some more thought required regarding tomorrow’s ride.
But until then, have a good one.
