Weekly Review August 7th – 13th 2023

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

The usual mix then this week. It once again looks like I skipped Sunday, but rather I went out for a 10km walk and don’t record them here.

Here are this week’s rides:

I’d say I struggled this week.

Tuesday’s SST session felt exhausting. The metrics at the end of the ride, average heart rate in particular, show that I was significantly higher than previous weeks. I’m not quite sure why, but it definitely felt harder.

Will that be the same again tomorrow?

Could it have been because I was coming off the back of a hard climb at the weekend?

Could it have been me messing with my Garmin settings?

I genuinely don’t know.

On Wednesday I wanted to try out MyWhoosh for my recovery / endurance level workout. But that needed a whopper of a 9gb patch applying. No time for that during a busy day of meetings, so instead I was back on Zwift for a dull, but hopefully useful session.

Then into race day mode on Thursday.

Unsurprisingly I got absolutely battered in this one. Lack of route knowledge, essentially. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Had I spotted the KOM start marker I might have actually stood a chance. Whoops. Oh well, live and learn, ride and burn.

And that was me done for the midweek rides.

Into Saturday then where I had a toss up between Zwift’s The Crow Road, over on their weekly Climb Portal rotation, or instead I could make use of that 9gb download and try MyWhoosh.

So I hit up Columbia for a Cat 2 climb, and that wiped me out.

The sad part is, when I look at the graphs and tables above, I am generally overall not doing that well lately. My numbers are not still not where they need to be if I am going to hit my targets for the end of September.

But I don’t know what else I can do?

I’m trying my best, but it’s simply not good enough.

Speaking of which, I had a full week of 67kg weigh ins. That’s up from the 66kg I was at when I was at my peak, but I guess it is where I hoped to be. So on that front, things are good. Hopefully it steadily trends down a notch over the next couple of weeks anyway.

For now I will be updating Zwift back to 67kg, down from the 68kg I believe it is currently set at.

Anyway, more of the same for the week ahead.

SST, endurance, Race, Climb, and some form of recovery.

Is it working? I don’t know. Maybe I’m in the dip at the moment. Hopefully things come good and everything pays off.

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