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.
Four rides this week. I’d have loved to have got in a fifth, particularly an outdoors ride on Christmas Eve. However, due to some crazy circumstances, I don’t think the week actually could have been any more productive.
The rides this week were as follows:
- Tuesday – The Slow Must Go On (Indoors / Zwift)
- Wednesday – End Of Year Ramp Test (Indoors / Zwift)
- Thursday – So I Guess This Is Actual Recovery Now? (Indoors / Zwift)
- Sunday – Norseman Workout #6: Vasstulan (Indoors / Zwift)
OK, so the obvious big deal this week was the ramp test.
The result from this was an increase of FTP from 234w to 255w. I’ve said a few times since, I take this with a pinch of salt.
However, it has been an interesting metric to use during the final Norseman ride. Boy, I felt that uptick, that’s for sure.
The summary is simply this:
I don’t believe I could ride at 255w for an hour. Heck, I genuinely think I’d struggle to hit the ~270w for 20 minutes that it would take to actually achieve this FTP in the full Zwift test.
But more than that, I put way more faith in the 4DP test results than either the FTP test, or the ramp test.
Anyway, it’s been an interesting uptick, and if I had done the 4DP test I am confident I could have beaten 234w… but probably only barely. If I’d hit 240w I’d have been chuffed, 245w and I’ve been thrilled. Or, as thrilled as I feel until I have to actually work out at that heightened intensity anyway.
During the Norseman rides I’ve been feeling like I’m underselling myself. I’ve felt the need to push harder, and that I had it in me to do so.
I’m guessing those workouts should have been pretty taxing, and they haven’t been. Good workouts, yes, but not to the point where I’m dripping with sweat and really exerting myself.
Actually, if anything, I feel I’ve lacked those kinds of rides all year. I can’t remember the last serious climb I did, and I feel that’s definitely to my detriment.
So having the new figure, even if I don’t fully believe in it, should – hopefully – serve to pull me upwards towards a higher FTP, even if I’m not there yet.
Beyond that, I’m honestly just glad to have done the ramp test.
Sometimes I think to myself that I’d have quit cycling a long time ago without this blog to keep me honest. It’s the same with the ramp test. God knows I put it off for long enough anyway, but publicly shaming myself each week by having to turn up, write up a weekly review post and say, yet again, I failed to meet my goal… well, it was enough to motivate me to see it through.
And that’s definitely a good thing.
For the week ahead I need to do two things primarily:
- An SST session at 255w… just to see how hard this is 🙂
- And write up my yearly review.
Even though it’s perpetually wet outside, and that I do not fully trust myself to have correctly replaced the tyre on my rear wheel (or at any rate, seated the tube properly), I am so desperate to get outdoors before the year ends that I may well just go out and get wet. Oh, and risk the inner tube kerploding.
Beyond that, any bike activity is welcome as I have piled on the food and beer intake over Christmas. And also I’d really like to go out for a hill climb, and I don’t mean on bike. I’d love to walk up one of the local hills – Fairsnape or Parlick. Let’s see if I can manage that this week.