Every 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 consisted of 5 days of riding. Whilst I recorded slightly less time on the bike this week than last, the activities this week were overall more intensive for the same amount of time taken.
This weeks rides were as follows:
- Monday – VLOG #6 – Bilsborrow to Inskip (Outdoor)
- Wednesday – Team 3R’s Choice: Stage 5 Longer Race A/B (Indoor / Zwift)
- Thursday – VLOG #7 – Bleasdale (Outdoor)
- Friday – Indoor Outdoors: Doesn’t Work (Outdoor)
- Sunday – Laps and Strava Segments (Outdoor)
For the first time ever, I had more outdoor rides than indoor rides this week. That’s down to the beautiful weather we’ve had here in the North of the UK as of late.
Unfortunately today (as I write this) is scheduled to be the last nice day for some time. I’m currently debating one final trip outdoors versus an SST session on Zwift.
Easily the hardest ride of the week was the final ride of the Tour For All 2020 – Team 3R’s Choice: Stage 5 Longer Race A/B.
Overall I enjoyed the Tour For All, though I am not sure the idea of mixing categories for both watts per kilo and distance works. I found the events fun, but being the very baseline of Category A (3.2w/kg), I got absolutely annihilated in every single race. That wasn’t so much fun.
As ever, taking the rides purely from a workout perspective, pushing myself to my limit can’t really be beat.
The one other obvious bad thing about the mixing of weight and distance was that it seemed to break Zwift Power during races. As far as I can determine, this is because with two races under one event, ZP couldn’t reasonably work out where half the grid was supposed to be. Shame.
It was a welcome and refreshing change to get out and about so much on the bike this week.
I can’t say every ride was a true winner. I tried a bunch of different things, from simply exploring, to on-road workouts and even race-pacing myself with a few laps. Getting out in 24c weather was exhausting though, and I did end up with a bad bit of sun burn on both arms.
Still, I needed a break from Zwift. Frankly I’m a bit bored of the platform at the moment.
Fortunately, other very interesting options exist.
I’m debating between a few at the moment:
- RGT Cycling
- Suffer Fest
- Tacx Software
- Rouvy
- GTA 5: Bike
There are probably a few others I’m not even aware of. I want a video / game style platform, but I need some new routes.
Probably the most interesting to me at the moment is the GTA 5 option, but I’m not sure if I can be bothered with all the setup steps.
Lastly for this week I’m still not too sure how I feel about the sudden crazy spikes and dips in my stats after switching to using the Favero Assioma DUO pedals for my power source.
I love the pedals, no doubt about that. The stats they produce are amazing, and I love pouring over all my metrics post ride.
But it sucks that everything seems to have become a big bundled mess. I’ve noticed that outdoors things are way more messy when it comes to stats. The Wahoo Tickr, for example, reports some wild numbers – usually on the very low side – which influences my stats in weird ways, too.
Anyway, as above, I’m not sure how many days out I’ll get on the road in the near future. The weather is supposed to be about to take a down turn, and – hopefully – I will find some paid work soon, which means day time rides will be off the cards anyway.
The one other thing I’ve noticed is that as lock down eases here in the UK, the roads are slowly but surely getting busier and busier, and the number of idiots out there increases proportionately. Maybe limiting myself to Sunday morning outdoor rides isn’t such a bad thing anyway.
OK, here’s to the week ahead!