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:
- Sunday – Layer Cake (Outdoor)
- Saturday – Wind Shear (Outdoor)
- Thursday – Tour De Zwift 2021 – Stage 5: Shorter Ride (Indoor / Zwift)
- Wednesday – Tour De Zwift 2021 – Stage 5: Longer Ride (Indoor / Zwift)
- Tuesday – Missed It By 5 (Indoor / Zwift)
Like last week, this one was a week of two halves.
In the first half I was entirely indoors. With it being the middle of UK winter, nights are dark by 4.30pm, and so going out on the bike on weekday evenings is currently not possible. Therefore it’s all Zwift / indoor stuff at the moment.
And that’s fine because the indoor rides as part of the Tour de Zwift 2021 are pushing me out of my comfort zone, and definitely helping me regain the fitness I lost during illness in November.
I know Stage 6 of the TdZ has now started, and from what I can see this stage is “easier” than the previous three in that there’s little climbing involved. It’s all distance. Of course it’s still a great workout, but I’m glad of the comparatively less intensive week ahead.
With the first half of the week being indoors, it was definitely nice to get out on both Saturday and Sunday for outdoor rides.
Neither was particularly exciting – they both covered routes, or sections of routes, that I have done several times before.
But still, it beats being indoors from a variety point of view.
From the graphs it’s really interesting to compare and contrast. The indoor rides were steady aerobic activities, but the outdoor rides let me chill out mostly, but stretch my legs for short, sharp anaerobic bursts.
Nice.
The big news from this week was in recording a new FTP figure.
I don’t know why, or how I managed to put in a 20 minute effort during the Stage 5 shorter ride, but I came out with a figure of 247w averaged, resulting in a new FTP figure of 235w. This puts me at 3.8w/kg, with a yearly target set at 3.9w/kg.
So really promising stuff, considering it’s only the first of February today. Just 11 months to find that 0.1w/kg! As ever with these things, somehow finding that extra bit seems almost insurmountable. I feel like I gave it my all in those twenty minutes, but then I must have had something left in the tank as I had to recover at pace and keep up as best I could… so there is hope.
Much like last week, I’ll be more than happy if I can repeat the 50/50 split, with my weekday rides consisting of one recovery effort, two higher intensity TdZ rides, and then – hopefully – being able to get outdoors again on both Saturday and Sunday. I can handle the cold (just), but I hear several days of snow are due, so who knows if I’ll even get out once?
Fingers crossed.