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’s rides were as follows:
- Tuesday – Tour De Zwift 2021 – Stage 8: Longer Ride (Indoors / Zwift)
- Wednesday – Control, Control, You Must Learn Control! (Indoors / Zwift)
- Thursday – Tour De Zwift 2021 – Stage 8: Standard Ride (Indoors / Zwift)
- Saturday – Highs of Zero (Indoors / Zwift)
Only four rides this week. This largely came down to Sunday being too windy to ride safely, rather than too cold, which is the usual.
This week saw the end of this year’s Tour de Zwift, which I am bit sad about. I definitely feel like I’ve improved my fitness throughout the last ~6 weeks or so, and now that I don’t have one or two easy to find harder rides each week, I’m going to likely find it just enough of an excuse to slack off.
Out of the two final TdZ 2021 rides this week, I’d definitely say the Standard Ride around New York was harder than the longer ride around London. This was all to do with the climbing per lap – 360m total, versus 100m or so for London.
Anyway, on the Zwift front, things are looking ready for a change.
I’ve said it on and off since November that I’ve been looking to switch away from Zwift and try out another platform.
The Sufferfest is the obvious candidate, but Rouvy also looks worth a shout.
As both have 14 day trials, I’m thinking I will try both and see which I prefer.
No doubt Zwift will find a reason to remain installed and “just there” ready for a re-subscribe. The simplicity and low focus on pain are why I think Zwift does better than The Sufferfest. But we shall see.
Not getting a ride out yesterday was really frustrating for me.
I like my Sunday ride as I like to take it easy, go for a leisurely potter around Preston, and generally just unwind after harder rides in the week.
As it was, with the wind at ridiculous levels, I decided to stay safe and stay indoors.
The options were either a Zwift session, or install one of the other apps, or erm, do nothing. For once, and in line with what I said last week, I decided to do nothing.
But my word, I felt like I was climbing the walls by the end of the day. I needed some kind of exercise and having not got any, I was super agitated. Anyway, as I write this, I have managed to get outdoors today (Monday), so all was not lost.
For the week ahead, I’d quite like to get involved in one of those harder Tuesday night workouts I last did back in October. For various reasons I’ve not managed to get to one of those sessions for ages, but I did find it challenging and look forward to repeating.
Also, I believe that the Pride Rides are up and running on Zwift in February, so I will look to do that next week. I’m not sure if they run on both Saturday and Sunday, or just Sunday. Hopefully both. I can’t remember.
Other than that, my aim this week is to get another platform installed and have a go at something a little different. Let’s see what happens.