Each week Zwift sends me an email summarising my activity for the week. For previous weekly reviews click here.
Last week consisted of fives rides, of which three were workouts, one was a free rides, and one was a race:
- Tuesday – 3R Gotham Grind Flat Race
- Wednesday – 10-12wk FTP Builder Week 8 Day 1
- Thursday – SST
- Saturday – Zwift Academy Tri 2020: Half-Distance Power Development
- Sunday – Yorkshire (free ride)
I exceeded both of my weekly riding goals, covering 163km in 5 hours and 4 minutes of riding (weekly 100km, 3hr goals).
You might think that by far and away the biggest achievement of the week has to be hitting the 50,000m climbing goal of Zwift’s Climb Everest Challenge. This saw me unlock the Tron Bike after 900m of climb on Sunday.
However, I have to say that I found the whole thing rather anticlimactic.
I guess I was absolutely exhausted by the end of Sunday’s ride, and as such it maybe killed some of the satisfaction. However, genuinely, I think I just don’t find that much value in the virtual tat that I collect in games. It’s all about the workout, and the fitness. The “shiny” stuff doesn’t hold a huge appeal to me.
By contrast, the most rewarding ride of the week was the shortest. But also, the hardest.
That would be the dinner time race I did on Tuesday.
I went into that one with no warm up, and really it was all very last minute. Even so, I absolutely loved that race. It was a solid workout, and I was able to grab 11th place. Not a bad way to spend a lunch break.
I put some of the race performance down to having had a fairly relaxed week the week before.
When thinking about racing tomorrow, I am much less keen. My legs are still smashed from yesterday’s trip around Yorkshire. It’s been a while since I have felt this jelly legged. Well, maybe the last time was the day after my last Alpe ascent.
Anyway, the nice thing is the Tour of Watopia 2020 started today. I’ve not done any of the events yet, but that does fill my schedule with opportunity.
I now have ~3 days left to fit in both the longer group ride (~50km) and also the flat race (~20km).
I doubt I’ll get to the flat race tomorrow, so maybe my plan is to do the longer ride tomorrow, but at an easier pace. And then do the race on Thursday dinner time. I definitely need to check the dates to ensure this is possible.
The other good ride of the week was the SST session. I’d been a bit worried after my first attempt at SST at 214w, but this week I managed to put in a really good shift on Thursday ride. The third “on” block in particular was really solid, smooth, and stable.
Overall it was a really good week.
And also on Saturday I hit my 1 year anniversary since buying the bike and getting up and running on Zwift. I did a small post about this featuring the first three ride’s stats which I have previously never blogged.
The medium to long term plan for the year remains at hitting 230w FTP, and that means continuing to acclimatize to 3.1w.kg. Slow and steady.