Each week I try to review and reflect on my previous week on the bike. This allows me to see how my fitness and ability is progressing on a wider timescale than day to day. For previous weekly reviews please click here.
This week consisted of 5 days riding, with two indoor rides, one of which turned out to be a bit of a disaster, and the other rides were all outdoors.
Overall the week was fair to middling.
This week’s rides were as follows:
- Monday – Chill and Kill (Indoors / Outdoors)
- Thursday – Sweet Spot Fail – Where Did I Go Wrong? (Indoor / Zwift)
- Friday – Training Status: Productive (Outdoors)
- Saturday – Pre Pizza Pedal (Outdoors)
- Sunday – Private Road Got Rode (Outdoors)
The week started off in a fairly relaxing manner. I did a Zwift session, doing one of my usual active recovery sessions from the FTP Builder program as a light ride, as by that point I’d done five days consecutive riding.
Immediately after that ride I had to go to the car garage to drop off my car. It’s a fairly dodgy area, and I was having to kit up and clip in surrounded by hooded yoots. Not good. Not good at all. As a result, I managed to get in some anaerobic activity as I left the crime scene at pace.
Given that I’d done 5 days in a row, I decided to take Tuesday and Wednesday as back to back rest days.
And in theory, that should have meant I was lovely and fresh for Thursday.
Alas, no.
Well, I think I was fresh. But that ride was anything but lovely. In fact, it was one of the hardest rides I’ve done in a long while.
The only benefit of that whole experience was some really interesting insights from Phil in the comments. Thanks Phil!
Following on from Thursday’s failure, I decided to go easier on myself on Friday, just heading out into the countryside for a lighter ride. In the end though I found myself doing some sprint work.
And the same went for Saturday.
Sprinting is just something I don’t do very much of at all. I enjoyed it though. More than I was expecting. Definitely something different to the norm, and far removed from the Thursday night routine.
I think with the Zwift Academy pretty much upon us, and me not wanting to start off with a ridiculously difficult FTP figure that I can’t meet, that either tomorrow night (Tuesday) or Wednesday I have to do a ramp test before starting on the Academy program. Not exactly looking forward to that, but with my continued weight loss, I think it’s important to be “honest” (for want of a better word) about my current functional threshold power level.
On the plus side, the Garmin seems happier with my recent workouts.
As below, there was a large bout of “unproductive” training recently. I’m honestly not sure how these figures are calculated. Most rides feel the same to me.
What Phil mentioned in the comments re: tracking my resting heart rate is definitely interesting to me, and something I am going to do. This means wearing my Wahoo Tickr even when not riding. Not sure what app to use to monitor this, but I’m going to start with it, from tomorrow morning.
And so this week is going to be about tracking my heart rate when not exercising, doing the ramp test to get an understanding of my current ability, and getting into the Zwift Academy program.
Given my work schedule and other commitments, that seems like a fairly full week for me right now. Let’s see how I get on.
Just get a fitbit that does HRM monitoring? It’s a really useful tool- and I can get 5bpm down on resting heart rate by cycling for 2 weeks (or stop for 5 days and its back up)
I’ve been using my Wahoo Tickr strap (same one I use on the bike) – feels a bit weird sat at the desk with it on, to be fair. I combined it with the Wahoo Fitness app on the iPad – fine as I can have that on charge all day next to me also. Had absolutely no joy with the Wahoo android app.
Anyway, long story short, got a resting heart rate of 80bpm average.
So… shall I book the undertakers just now, or leave it till early next week?
😀
Hope you’re well 👍
That does sounds rather high for somebody that is so active/healthy with the amount of cycling you do. Having said that, each app/device could be measuring/reporting slightly differently. Still vote on a device that can monitor over long periods- rather than you manually doing it daily.
I don’t trust the Tickr that much honestly. It reports some crazy numbers too frequently. Often times at the start of a workout, I can be at 230bpm – you can see the graph, it starts ridiculously high, then drops after a while. Or sometimes it locks up. That said, over ~8 hours, it should be fairly consistent, but there was some spikes which bumped it for sure.
My wife has, or had a fitbit… I’ll see if I can nick hers. I’ve not worn a watch in about 20 years, and without getting to try it on (not easy with corona virus restrictions), I’m not wanting to commit to buying something I’ve not tested in person.