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 one was a workout, two were races, and two were group rides. This week also concluded my Tour de Zwift 2020.
These rides were as follows:
- Monday – Sweet Spot Training (Medium)
- Tuesday – TdZ: Stage 6 Race (Richmond)
- Thursday – TdZ: Stage 7 Long Distance (Yorkshire)
- Saturday – TdZ: Stage 7 Race (Yorkshire)
- Sunday – Vatternrundan Group Ride
The week started off with me being unsure of my work situation. Outside of “real life” activities, that gave me the opportunity to get in a longer session on the bike during the morning.
I’d been a little apprehensive about doing Sweet Spot Training at a higher intensity / FTP. But I needn’t of been. The workout itself was straightforward enough, though very tiring by the last set. I was a little concerned that this may have wiped me out ahead of the next day’s scheduled racing.
Heading into the Tuesday night TdZ: Stage 6 Race on Richmond, I was feeling pretty tired. I’d started my new role at work that afternoon, and had been up since 6:30 working on other stuff anyway. With my legs feeling it from the longer session on Monday, I would have skipped this race had it not been the last available day to complete Stage 6.
The race went fairly well. I didn’t lose my chain after the climb, as I had in the Stage 6 Group Ride. Of all maps to race on, I think Richmond is my current favourite. At least, so long as it’s a single lap 😉
Thursday night resumed riding with the TdZ: Stage 7 Group Ride on Yorkshire / Harrogate. This was two laps of the forward loop, covering ~250m of climb per 14km lap. Aside from being a solid workout, I was able to get some recon in for the forthcoming race on Saturday. I feel this was really beneficial in helping me understand when to push, and when to recover.
Going into Saturday’s race, I was feeling fairly fresh, and had a good idea of what my race strategy would be. The group ride recon really helped, and I think this may have been my all time best Zwift performance over ~25 minutes(?).
Unfortunately, however, Zwift lost the final 1/4 of my ride somehow. It’s strange in that Training Peaks seems to have it, but he download is corrupt. Strava only has the first 3/4 of it, and Zwift’s own revised event panel won’t load it at all. Not my only technical issue during the Tour de Zwift 2020.
To round off the week I took part in the Vatternrundan group ride, which was 1h 45m on the Greatest London Loop. We completed about 2.5 laps in that time, covering over 60km. The pacing of this ride was such that it felt like a long active recovery session, which was just what I needed after 14 hard Tour rides. Also, I unlocked a new jersey on completion. Bonus.
Looking back on the last five weeks, I’ve really enjoyed the Tour de Zwift 2020. As ever with these things, there have been ups and downs, and times when I have not wanted to do certain events. Choosing to do each stage as the Long group ride and the Race was always going to push me out of my comfort zone (particularly the racing), but I feel my personal fitness has come on massively as a result.
Whilst I’m in the habit of doing a race per week at this stage, I am going to include this in my weekly riding schedule, possibly aiming to do a ~15km race each week. This mimics the Tour schedule. The challenge being finding races that meet this criteria.
Speaking of criteria… or at least, Criterium, this gives me a solid reason to finally explore Zwift’s race track – Crit City. This track seems like the perfect choice to meet the needs of the above. So long as I can find a regular weekly race at a time that suits, I look forward to giving my legs a weekly blasting.
And so that takes me into a sort of unusual grey zone now where I have nothing concrete planned, just a few ideas of “things to do”. I may try and get back on RGT Cycling this week and see what’s changed. I believe they have added a new route since I last gave it a go (Majorca), and there’s also an interesting Virtual Roads feature. They also seem to have added in racing, and scheduled group rides. Whilst feature-wise RGT Cycling is comparatively similar to Zwift, the community aspect was something that was noticeably different last timed I tried it, so looking forward to seeing what’s changed.
The one other thing I may do, now that I have a bunch more free time per week, is get back into the Tacx Software. The climbs on there are hard, no doubt about it, but I’m absolutely convinced that they helped my fitness grow massively as a result.