Each week Zwift sends me an email summarising my activity for the week. For previous weekly reviews click here.
This week consisted of five rides, of which three were Zwift workouts, one was a climbing ride on RGT Cycling, and one was a large Zwift group ride. Three of the five rides this week were over an hour in length, although one ride did misreport in Training Peaks as being over an hour. The big frustration this week was in not racing. Yet again.
This week’s rides were as follows:
- Tuesday – Short SST Session
- Wednesday – FTP Builder Week 6 Day 3 (Recovery)
- Thursday – RGT Cycling Cap Formentor (Climb)
- Saturday – Zwift Academy Tri 2020 (Workout)
- Sunday – Vatternrundan Group Ride #7
Thanks to the 1h45m Sunday ride, I absolutely smashed my 100km weekly riding goal, putting in 186km this week.
I managed only one early morning session this week. That was my Tuesday morning SST session. This wasn’t through lack of early starts. Frankly I’ve been sleeping abysmally for the last 4-5 weeks now, and I’m not really sure why. However, just because I wake up early, doesn’t always means I’m eager to get out of bed. Far from it.
After last week’s climb of Alpe du Zwift on the Sunday, my legs were definitely still very tired heading into the session on Tuesday morning. Getting through the 40 minutes of work at a slightly higher wattage than I was used to was definitely a chore, and I think that kinda set the scene for the rest of the week.
Even though sometimes I seem to have “easier” weeks, I’m not overly concerned by this. The fact seems to be that an hour on the bike works out at about 500 calories, whether I go harder, or easier. There’s usually only ~50 calories or so difference in it, by the end of things. The only time this seems to differ is on a purely climbing ride, where each minute is always more intense.
Whilst tired from Sunday and Tuesday, I didn’t want a purely blue zone ride for Wednesday, so varied it up a touch with a dinner time ride (that’s lunch time if you’re not from the North) that featured 1 minute on’s, followed by 4 minutes in zone 2. This was a fairly routine ride, whereby I got to watch quite a bit of Tarantino’s latest movie – Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
By Thursday I was feeling fairly fresh, so decided to repeat Cap Formentor on RGT Cycling, in the hope that I wouldn’t accidentally suspend my PC again mid-ride. Whoops. On that ride I had a fairly decent first climb, but the second one turned into a slog and I don’t feel I performed that well. I was glad to reach the end of the course, and as it was Thursday, call time on my mid-week rides.
Heading into Saturday I was thinking of preservation into Sunday’s climbing ride. This is often the case on Saturday, and if Sunday then doesn’t pan out as expected, it feels like a wasted opportunity. It’s hard to know that in advance though.
Saturday’s ride was interesting in that it was the first workout of the Zwift Academy Tri 2020 series. This isn’t something I’ve given much attention too, as Triathalon holds very little appeal to me. I do like the bike, I don’t like to run, and my preference for water is hot and relaxing… aka, a nice warm bath.
I picked this workout simply because it looked like a lot of Zone 3 work / tempo, and that’s something I don’t normally do much of. Also, it was concentrating on low cadence work, which again, is something I deeply aware that I do very little of. Coming out of this one, I enjoyed it and am considering doing the next workout in the series, and seeing how that fares. If I like it, I’ll see the full cycling portion of this one through. It’s nice to have a bit of structure.
Sunday should, in theory, be all about a hard climb. My ideal scenario is to get up around 8.30 or 9am, then have some breakfast (cereal or toast, and coffee) and then hit a hard hill. Ideally, 1000m+ of climbing, which can take between 1 and 2 hours, all being well.
As it was, this week’s riding options were either get Tacx Software up and running again – which means putting my hand in my wallet, and I’m a bit tight, so I keep avoiding that option. Or, I could have done Zwift’s final gran fondo, this one being March’s route. That one looked a little too similar to January, and the start times were not great for me – 8am, or 10am. I’ve learned the hard way that waiting too long on a Sunday usually means I don’t ride at all, so instead, I opted for the 8.30am start of the Vatternrundan group ride.
I enjoyed this ride, simply because it was long and fairly easy going. At near 2 hours, we covered over 60km and I burned close to a thousand calories. A great start to a Sunday, but without the energy sapping antics of a hard climb. That said, I do feel I cheated… as I really don’t feel I did a right lot last week.
And frankly the stats tell the same tale.
Whilst I did just shy of 6 hours on the bike this week, compared to 5 hours the week earlier, the Training Stress Score and calories burned were almost identical. More work, less reward. Not efficient.
As I said at the start of this week’s review, I don’t mind this too much as an easier week, every now and again, isn’t that big of a deal. In fact, it’s probably a good idea, overall.
What I am most frustrated about is my lack of racing. I went from averaging 2 races a week during the Tour de Zwift 2020, to now being back to doing an average of none. This is partly because finding races that meet my time schedule is proving really tricky. But it’s also partly because without a definitive motivating goal, it’s easy not to do them.
Fortunately, Zwift have just announced the Tour of Watopia is returning for 2020, and whilst shorter than the TdZ, I’m hoping the format remains roughly the same. Fingers crossed.
Lastly for this week, assuming I actually do get in the climbing session on the Reverse Epic KOM that I keep promising myself that I will do, I should (I think) hit the 50km climbing goal and get the Tron Bike at some point very soon. If not this week, then surely next?
I’ve also got my eye on some early morning races for the week ahead. No idea how feasible this will be, but we’ll find out over the next 7 days. And I’m also eager to see how my next SST session goes, given that I’ve had a fairly easy week. No excuses, unlike last week. If it hurts now then I’m in a lot of trouble!