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.
It looks like I slacked off on the Sunday this week, but that wasn’t the case. Rather than do a free ride and risk getting the bike filthy in the not-raining-but-still-wet conditions, I went for a long walk instead.
All rides were indoors this week, and all on Zwift.
Here are this week’s rides:
- Tuesday – Bumpo
- Wednesday – Your Own Personal Sweatbox
- Thursday – Zwift Race the Worlds: Stage 1 – Rolling Highlands (B)
- Saturday – Zwift Climb Portal: Col du Platzerwasel
A fairly standard week in terms of the ride types completed, albeit with some good results.
I started the week with my usual Tuesday SST session. The difference this week was that I bumped my FTP up from 235w, as it has been for all of July, up to 240w.
The plan is to keep the 240w figure for August, then bump it once more at the start of September to 245w.
All of this is still below the 248w figure I maxed out at earlier in the year, but with the hope that gradually building this way will have some net positive benefits to my end of September FTP test. The aim is to hit 250w average, but I appreciate that means holding ~264w for 20 minutes, which is a massive ask for me right now.
Of course this has no weight information associated, but I am assuming I will be clocking in around 67.5kg at test stage.
Wednesday’s ride was my usual ‘endurance’ effort. It’s endurance in pace, not in length. At just an hour it is probably the easiest ride of the week. Also the most boring.
Then Thursday, race day.
As per usual, I got dumped out of the back as we hit the third to last climb of the short but sharp race.
I’m not massively looking forwards to the remainder of August’s Scotland-based races, as I’ve rarely fared well on those maps. But still, I shall turn up and make up the back markers.
The one positive out of this week’s race was the dynamic FTP bump at the end of the ride. I don’t put much of anything on this number, but it is nice for the ego / reassurance that things are generally moving in the right direction.
Saturday’s climb was easily the most challenging, and probably beneficial ride of the week.
A good 30 minute sustained effort.
I guess I should be pleased with the power output, as it’s basically where I was for the whole of July. Truthfully I would have been a lot happier seeing 240w on the board.
However, that’s 235w over 30 minutes, so I perhaps could have whacked that up a bit over a shorter distance?
Anyway, it felt good to get in a solid climb for once. It’s been a while.
I then went out for tea and ate a garlic bread, pizza, and large glass of red. So all wiped out.
Then Sunday was a ‘recovery’-ish walk. I don’t track them, but it was about equivalent to a 1h 20m bike ride in intensity.
Last then this week, the weight has finally come back in to the 67kgs.
And well it should. Barring eating out twice this week, I have been behaving very sensibly.
I’m thinking I’m actually a tad underweight at 67kg, but it’s where I have been targeting so it’s good to be back there. Give it another week in there, on average, and I’ll update Zwift.
OK, so week ahead:
More of the same.
SST, easy, Race, rest, Climb, free-ride.
That’s the plan, with today, Monday, being a rest day.