As it’s Friday, and as I figured I’d want a beer after work (currently enjoying as I type!), and because I worked late last night, I figured what the heck, why not take an hour lunch and get in as much of a ride as I could during my dinner break.
And by dinner, I mean what Northerners call dinner.
Watopia was fairly quiet. I opted for the flattest route I could find, and immediately did a U-turn, figuring what the heck, why not just do the route backwards?
Well, that went wrong. It seems that doing a U-turn totally messed up the route and I ended up riding all over the joint.
Two things went wrong almost immediately.
The first was I forgot to put on my fan. No big deal, unclip, turn it on (no kids about during the day to help me with this), clip back in and crack on.
I got spinning and dropped a bunch of gears and figured I was going nowhere fast. Looking down, I noticed I was in the little ring at the front. Not sure how that happened.
Pushing back up to the big ring and disaster, off came the chain. Total fail. Had to unclip again, fix it, and go wash my hands. You can see the dips at the start of my ride graph.
With my initial problems out of the way, I tried my best to keep at or above 190w for a 5 minute effort.
Honestly, I found this pretty challenging.
I think but am not certain, part of the problem is that my right shoe is rubbing against my little toe. My right leg is the strong of the two, and over the last few rides I’ve found myself somewhat hesitant to go hard as frankly, it hurts.
I’ve done some checking and I cannot feel anything inside the shoe that could be causing this. I often have issues with new shoes. I’ve got blisters from wearing them, but they aren’t hurting me. I’m guessing it will take 100’s of kilometers to wear them in, and potentially a plaster wrapped around my little toe could be the short term answer. Bit concerned for the Alpe Du Zwift climb.
With fairly rested legs I’d have been a bit disappointed in myself if I couldn’t put in a good effort on the Watopia 0.36km bridge sprint. Whilst only good enough for 34th on the live leaderboard, this was enough to be beat my previous personal best by over a second.
I was absolutely bushed after this though.
Straight after the bridge sprint, there’s a short climb. I’m not sure of the gradient – maybe 5%. It’s not a killer, but it’s taxing, especially if you’ve given it your all on the previous sprint.
After this short ascent I noticed Zwift was trying to take me up the hilly KOM. No thank you.
Another U-turn kept me on the flat.
I was pretty disappointed in myself for almost missing the 10km under 20 minute metric I’ve set for myself. I can’t say this was caused by the slow start – as best I’m aware the ride timer stops if you come to a standstill for any reason.
I’m not sure what is causing my fatigued feeling at the moment. As mentioned, these past three rides have felt underwhelming in terms of the performances I’m capable of. I’m kinda hoping it’s the shoe rubbing issue.
With a bit of coaxing (read: another U-turn) I managed to get Zwift to take me down Fuego Flats.
Somewhere along the Fuego Flats circuit is a 0.5km sprint. I’ve previously attempted this sprint and found it challenging. The final 200m is particularly biting, and usually there are some ungainly grunts and shouts to accompany my effort.
Good enough for 20th on the day, and again, over a second off my previous personal best. Pretty happy with this, as I gave it about as hard as I could.
After this sprint I was pretty bushed. I couldn’t find a tremendous amount of motivation to get back up into the green zone, and was largely around 120-130w for a fairly long period of time.
With my dinner hour time limit coming to an end, I decided I’d put in a final stint of 5 minutes at or above 190w.
This went fairly well. I managed to keep up the effort for the full five minutes, but was more than happy when the timer hit 49 minutes in, and my 5 minutes were up.
After this, I did a little light coasting and then had to get off the bike and into the shower.
As mentioned earlier, this wasn’t by any means my strongest ride. I’m feeling nervous about the Alpe Du Zwift climb now, primarily due to the footwear issue.
On the plus side I managed to get 463 calories burned even if I wasn’t at my best. I’d done the decent thing and prepped some sandwiches to finish off post ride. Probably all of my 463 calories and then some.
Bit frustrated with the Zwift route planning on this ride. In future I guess I’ll stick to the forwards routes if I’m not in the mood to help Zwift along.
I’m pretty sure that’s it from me until Sunday now.
Welp, in the time it’s taken me to write this post I’ve necked my entire bottle of beer. Thirsty work this cycling lark.