It would appear I have joined in with Zwift Academy at the “lesser exertion” end of the first week. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but with all my pent up energy from the week, I’d liked to have had a little bit more of a harder workout for both this, and yesterday’s sessions.
Essentially this ride was booked as a group recovery ride, aiming to stick around 2.0w/kg.
This ride was well attended – as Zwift’s weekend big events often are – with ~350 riders turning up. What I learned during this ride was that Zwift will only render / display 100 riders at any one time. So you won’t actually see all the riders on the screen, which I didn’t know until today.
This became a problem for me as right out of the gate, in typical Zwift fashion, the front of the group went hell for leather and steamed off into the distance.
And me being a newb, I followed suit thinking I was sticking with the pack and that this was actually going to be way more intense than 2.0w/kg as advertised.
Before I knew it, I’d pushed way ahead. Totally accidentally. I couldn’t understand why I was on the fence. This wasn’t right.
I thought the yellow marker waaay behind me was the sweeper. Alas no. I had zoomed off, trying to keep up with the front runners pace.
This then led to about 5 minutes of me soft pedaling, waiting for the beacon to catch up.
Throughout this group ride, the ride leader – Olly Pickover – was instructing the pack as and when to ramp up from 2.0w/kg to 3.0w/kg.
This would last between 15 and 30 seconds, and was announced about every ten minutes. I liked this, as it gave me chance to get out of the saddle, something that is a bit of an issue on longer rides.
The problem was that as I was already ahead of the beacon, pushing at 3.0w/kg or greater was not helping me fall back.
In the end, I ignored the second push and waited for the beacon to catch up. Riding at 2.0w/kg is more than enough to get me sweating, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t working on this ride. I just prefer to be with the group.
There were a couple of reasons for me to attend this ride today.
Firstly, I need to get cracking with the Zwift Academy rides. I’m at least two group workouts behind now. And as the schedule for those rides is not great (for me), I’m looking at running them on my own. Apparently this is possible – just select them from the workout menu. Solo workouts count towards the target, so that gives me way more freedom. However, it means I miss out on the group workout experience, which I really enjoy.
Secondly, I attended as I want to try and meet my weekly goals.
I did meet the 3 hour riding goal today. And I’m ~6km off the weekly 100km goal. All things considered, that’s a big win for me.
During this ride I did go off plan, somewhat. When asked to bump up to 3.0w/kg, I opted instead to do some sprinting. This felt like more of a bang for my own personal buck. No regrets here.
I think I’d prefer to attend races for the 3 remaining mandatory group ride / race choices. For me, races are not only more fun, but also a better workout. I push much harder. They are certainly less social, but from a fitness perspective, they rock.
One thing I’m conscious of is over doing it.
My legs didn’t feel great today. Yesterday’s workout suggested a day of recovery between that ride and the next, and I have ignored that advice.
Tomorrow I plan to do another of the Zwift Academy workouts, and maybe that’s not the smartest of ideas. We shall see.
It’s a little disappointing to see only 506w as my best 5 second effort after yesterdays sprinting. The sprints today certainly felt as intense as yesterday. Clearly, feelings are all relative. I’d imagine I’d feel the same after a 1000w sprint as I did after that 740w sprint – i.e. totally sick / dead.
The social aspect of these group rides are where it’s at for me. Killing an hour on the bike with ~350 others is much more fun than riding solo. Given the choice, I would do this any day of the week. However, I don’t have that choice at the moment.
I’d definitely have liked to have ridden a little harder on this one. Such are the issues with the group rides. As above, that’s why I think racing would be a better fit for me at the moment.
All in all, a fun second experience of Zwift Academy 2019. I fully believe I’ve been lulled into a false sense of security with how easy these rides have been compared to what I expected coming into this event.
I’m sure reality will kick in tomorrow morning on Workout #4.
