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.
At 3300+ calories and 5h 20m on the bike, this has been my most intensive week’s cycling in a good long while – long enough that I couldn’t find a more intensive week on Training Peaks with quite a lot of back scrolling.
But you know what? I’ve enjoyed it.
Here are this week’s rides:
- Monday – Don’t Sprint Up Hill (Outdoors)
- Wednesday – Tour de Zwift 2022 Stage 1: Standard Ride (Indoors / Zwift)
- Thursday – Not The Ride I Should Have Done (Outdoors)
- Saturday – One Wrong Turn (Outdoors)
- Sunday – Tour de Zwift 2022 Stage 2: Long Ride (Indoors / Zwift)
A really nice mix of indoors and outdoors this week, with the harder sessions most definitely being indoors and on the turbo.
With a climb of the Alpe du Zwift, and a bit of a TT for Stage 1 of the TdZ22, I think I set myself a few new PB’s on the Zwift platform this week. Certainly my legs feel like I did.
Looking at the all time numbers, I think I’d be confident now saying I have an FTP of 231w. That’s a proven fact, and is – in my humble opinion – actually representative of what I can do, rather than the number I get set after an FTP test which is a sort of ‘best guess’ that I’ve never actually been able to achieve.
Ultimately what all this does mean is that if I continue to train with an FTP of 245w, I will likely ‘pull’ myself up further. If I set the FTP figure at 230w in Zwift, even though proven, would be too easy for me now.
That just seems to be a quirk of the way that measurement works.
Or, to put it another way, perhaps we all delude ourselves? 😀 Ooh, contentious.
Perhaps the most surprising thing to me this week was in that I hadn’t blown my legs on Saturday by staying out ~30 minutes longer than planned. I also had some little climbs to navigate. A nice route, but perhaps not the one you need the day before a hard climb.
Saying that, I didn’t find the Alpe quite as bad as I remember this time around. For the first half, give or take, I got into the social aspect. But in the second half I definitely had to knuckle down and grin and bear it. Not saying it was easy, far from it, but my plan worked.
Also what I would say is I definitely had more success this time around by following the average wattage, than last time around where I used watts per kilo.
What I found myself doing was really utilising that average. So I’d maybe go a little too hard, bump the figure up to say 240w average for the segment, before easing off down to 210-215w, and letting the figure slide back down. Also, based on previous experience I was able to manage my ride significantly better than previous attempts. Controlling the heart rate went well, maybe save for the last three corners, but staying seated and knowing when to ease off and when to push was definitely useful.
Overall then a really strong week, comparatively.
Looking out of the window as I type this, it’s going dark but the daylight is lasting those few minutes longer each evening. It’s still cold – though not freezing here. I’m thinking of investing in a proper pair of gloves, and based on this video:
I’m going to try the plastic / latex inners as a way to keep even more heat in. I’m finding my fingers are about the only thing that’s cold at the moment, so if I can solve that problem I think I might be sorted. Finally 🙂
Anyway, there’s more of the TdZ22 to continue on with this week. However, I’m not anticipating having quite as an intensive week this time around. But you never know.