I’ve sadly missed out on all of The Zwift Big Spin rides so far due to illness and what have you. Today’s ride was only by sheer luck.
Most of the time, if you miss a Zwift event start time, it’s tough luck.
However, even with about 10 minutes of the event already gone today (I think), I was still able to join. I was expecting / hoping to be dumped at the start line. But instead it did the ‘catch up’ thing where it drops you into the bunch and gives a ‘pedal assist’ for a while.
Well, I didn’t even have my cycling shoes on by that point, so I had to hot foot it into the living room, get hastily dressed, then back and onto the bike in order to get stuck in as quickly as possible.
As it was, I joined about 5km in.
I deliberately chose the shorter course – which was about 20km on the New York Mighty Metropolitan route – because I didn’t have enough time in my dinner break to do the longer 37km ride – not sure what route that was on. And given that I didn’t expect to join a bunch, 37km solo, even on Zwift, is longer than hour for me.
This one threw in a climb of the New York KOM, along with a decent amount of climbing to boot.
I really couldn’t be bothered today. I’ve struggled to ride generally this week, with my cough not improving any – if anything it has gotten worse. Possibly ride related.
But combine that with putting on some damp bib shorts, and it throwing it down outside, and I figured, hey, why not just do 30 minutes, and then make up another 30+ minutes tomorrow, on the four day weekend. Hopefully I might even get outside.
That was enough to convince me to get on, and as ever with these things, once you’re on it’s not quite as bad as you made it out in your head.
I decided that even though I’d be ‘done’ by 15km, I would stick on and finish off the full ~20km route. That would take me past half an hour, by which time I felt mentally like I’d done enough to let myself get off.
As I say, it’s my first time doing one of the Zwift Big Spin rides, and I grabbed myself the NYC Kit when I went over the line. To be honest, if I hadn’t gotten a spin for having not fully completed the route, I would not have bothered. But as it was, it was nice to take part.
I really felt like I flogged myself on this one. I tried my best to keep up a good pace, though it’s very evident that my fitness and form is massively down right now. Still, I have to restart from somewhere, and where better than here?
