With no intention of a hard ride this morning, I found myself up late (somehow my alarm worked, but was on silent?!?) and picking a ride at random.
Dutifully, I remembered all my usually forgotten items. Fan on. Towel nearby. Phone on charge.
And promptly forgot my drink. Arghh. Always something.
Honestly, an indoor cycling pre-ride Android checklist app would be a big seller. In my house, anyway.
One thing that’s been annoying me as of the last few rides is that Zwift doesn’t always seem to connect somehow with my trainer. On the first screen, I make sure my heart rate, trainer, and all that other jazz is big and blue, connected an ready to go. Then I get into the game, start pedaling… and nothing. The rider doesn’t move. It always seems to work if I close to game, then restart, but it’s weird that it keeps happening.
What is cool, though, is that if you have the Zwift Companion App open, then as soon as you go in game / on ride, the app switches from the overview to the map mode:
I really like this map view, with all my stats close to hand. Also having the various hot buttons at the bottom of the screen is very helpful. Much more so than having to lean over to the iPad and muck around with that UI.
As a quick tip, if you click the circle around your triangle icon, it gives a Ride On! to everyone in your vicinity. As such, today I gave my first Ride Ons 🙂
The only purpose of today’s indoor cycling was to ride 10km. With very little wiggle room in the time department, I was hoping to get through the 10km in about 20 minutes. I’ve not yet managed to break through 10km in under 20 minutes. And again, today, I only managed 19.7km in 20 minutes. It’s not quite fair, as that does include a warm up time. But let’s not re-open that can of worms.
Today’s ride certainly felt easier than both Saturday and Sunday. I still got a sweat on. My legs needed a bit of an easier ride, and heck, they still go. I have a couple of days away this week, so at least one of those will be a rest day. Until then, riding on is the only correct way forwards.
Mucking around with all the app buttons, I found that I can display the real time effort graph at the bottom of my ride, even when not on a workout.
One last thing today. I did three timed sprints on the London Classique. The first was just as I started my ride, so didn’t count. The second, and third attempts were somewhere around ~16.4 seconds. I know the third attempt was 2% slower than the second attempt. Unfortunately, I was having issues with the Zwift Companion App (or more accurately, my crappy HTC phone) so didn’t get a screenshot. Nothing amazing to report though.
Again, not really too sure what or how to ride tomorrow. I’m considering a 5 minute warm up, then a 15 minute fast pedalling at around or above 140w, followed by a 5 minute cooldown. I quite enjoyed that approach from yesterday’s workout.