Weekly Review December 7th – 13th 2020

by

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 was made up of seven riding days, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. And I must say, it’s been a tiring week.

I’ve definitely done harder weeks, which is strange really – more work in fewer days. But riding every day is more mentally tiring than physical, at least with the types of rides I’ve been doing. Definitely noticed that I’m trending towards shorter rides 🙂

This week’s rides were as follows:

The only one that will really stand out for me is the longer ride on Wednesday. But that’s for very different reasons.

It was nice to get back into some harder efforts this week.

I’m definitely still significantly down on power as a result of taking it easy for about 4 weeks due to illness. This was most noticable on Wednesday, where I really struggled with keeping a tempo pace for the first hour.

I went into Wednesday thinking I’d do my first indoor metric century ride. Then I didn’t get on the bike till after 09:30, and I needed to be off around 11:30. Well, averaging 50kph was perhaps a tad unrealistic.

What I tried to do was keep to around 200w or 3w/kg as an average for the first hour. I really struggled with this. Again maybe somewhat over estimating my ability and being unrealistic. I did manage to cover 36km in that first hour so maybe I’m being a touch harsh on myself.

One thing that is unusual about cycling that I’ve never experienced before so clearly elsewhere in other life endeavours is how measurable form can be. Having a month in easy mode (from a physical exercise point of view if nothing else) meant my form took an obvious and expected dip.

When it came back to working hard (or harder) my previous numbers seem so far away from me. The fact I once held around 250w for 20 minutes up innsbruck seems insurmountable right now.

A good example of this came in the max one minute efforts ride on Friday. I was so far below my previous best it’s as though it was between two entirely different people. Sure, there are some mitigating circumstances but the gulf is still a vast chasm.

That said it does mean I know what I’m capable of. It also says getting back to a 3.6w/kg average before the end of the year is not at all likely. I’m just far too far off the pace.

One last thing that I found difficult this week was having no set schedule. Having to choose a ride every day is a barrier I don’t need. Fortunately I found all these shorter official Zwift workouts to take part in. That’s nice as they are all new and that means more interesting than doing the same thing over and over. Still, it’s better than being restricted to only easy exercises I guess.

Looking ahead to the next week I still have just under half of the Advent of Cycling challenge to complete, which is really taking a toll on me I won’t lie. I’m set to get through it but having to ride and write and recover all over again each day is really taking it out of me. Christmas can’t come fast enough.

As I write this, tomorrow looks to be interesting. I’m taking part in a group workout I’ve done before which was a challenging and enjoyable experience. And I want to see out the final two Zwift Academy 2020 workouts before I’m done with this personal challenge. Those two remaining workouts sure look brutal.

And to finish up today it’s nice to finally see my black line back into the green zone on the Garmin website.

Still, the Garmin tells me I’m either unproductive or over training every ride at the moment. Yes, I believe you. Now leave me alone 🙂 there should be a “shut up I’m aware I’m an idiot” mode.

Leave a comment