At some point this week I remember saying about wanting to do a longer road ride, but finding it a bit nervy out there for various reasons.
The idea today was to do an hour, at as fast a pace as possible, out on the open roads. But with the caveat that I didn’t want to do this on my typical 30km flat circuit, because that one involves a fast moving and busy A-road, which isn’t ideal on a Saturday afternoon (aka one of the busiest times).
I did a bit of the normal route, before turning back early, thinking I’d loop around the countryside a bit. However I don’t know the routes that well, so it ended up with me coming pretty much back to my start point still with about 15 minutes left in the allotted 60. So I went back on the outbound leg again, and then cut in shorter.
Overall, not a bad loop. Not flat, and not as good as the 30km loop I do have available, but – in theory – safer.
Only, you know, not safer. It doesn’t matter that I’m wearing a bright orange jacket or have flashing lights front and back. Stupid people will pull out without looking, and that really does put a downer on proceedings.
On the plus side I got in the ride I wanted. It was a real slog. Not a pretty effort, and not a particularly powerful one, either.
But it was fair.
I think indoors I could maybe eek out a few more watts on the average, and certainly more distance, but I reckon over 60 minutes (well, nearly, I had a 5 minute warm up) that the ~220w figure was as much as I could give, and the 223w 20 minute average was a good indication I worked pretty consistently for the whole session.
I have to say, it was knackering.
As it stands Intervals.icu gives me an estimated FTP of 231w. I still think that’s pretty ambitious. I reckon I’m somewhere between 220 and 230w right now. And I think I am probably in a pretty good spot right now to do a test. So that should be real fun.
One for the week ahead. Tomorrow though, walkies.
