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.
Generally just settling back into it this week. The bigger challenge for me has been off the bike, but still fitness related. I’ll get on to that shortly.
In terms of cycling I got in five rides, all of which were outdoors. The weather has been nice here all week, so thoughts of staying indoors for any activity have been very quickly brushed aside. It’s amazing how much better I feel about the prospect of an outdoor ride to an indoor ride most of the time. I put that down to two things.
- I spend all day at the computer six days a week, putting in another hour or so indoors isn’t exactly good for the Vit-D intake.
- Generally, whilst I burn more calories outdoors, the rides are less rigid – no need to hold 90-95% of FTP for ~50 minutes… more on that below also.
Anyway, this week’s rides were as follows:
- Monday – Go Slow (Outdoors)
- Tuesday – Kajiggered (Outdoors)
- Thursday – Biker Mouse From Mars (Outdoors)
- Saturday – Somewhere Between Fast And Slow (Outdoors)
- Sunday – Not Quite As Busy As Christmas (Outdoors)
Saturday’s ride was the one where I pushed myself the hardest, though my performance was anything but stellar. The conclusion after that ride was that there’s a long way to go before I make up that final 10-20% that I lost during my month or so off the bike due to injury.
That said, I am pretty content with where I’m at, all things considered. I reckon if I did an FTP test at this point that I’d be down somewhat, but not hugely. No big deal. As I said last week, it’s really all about building back up the base fitness over the next several weeks.
I think I need to get the front chain ring replaced as a matter of urgency. There’s a hell of a lot of squeaking coming from the bike now – somewhere around that area. I suspect what I actually need is a fresh application of lubricant through that bottom bit that the chain ring connects on too. But I have no idea how to do that, so it’s a job for a professional. Hopefully that fixes it, and kills several birds with one moderately priced stone.
A surprise result for me this week came on Saturday evening when I weighed myself. Suddenly I’d rocketed up to 69.4kg.
I bet if I weighed myself now, it would have come down somewhat – but that does mean stripping nude. A nice little visual for you there.
Not overly concerned on any of this stuff, it’s just another measurement I take, usually after a ride. Hence the massive deviation when weighing myself hours after I’d ridden, had my tea and drunk two cans of beer.
I’m equally not overly concerned yet about the Training Status graph below.
It’s going to take a few weeks to even back out, but the initial uptick in training load is positive at least. Hopefully the VO2 Max comes back upwards as a lagging indicator.
What I am definitely lacking at the moment is structured training (aka Zwift workouts), and anything anaerobic. I did try to throw in a couple of short, bursty efforts this week but they weren’t sufficient to excite the Garmin into seeing any kind of anaerobic benefit.
Part of why I haven’t done much Zwifting lately is because the thought of doing a strict workout is so off putting. I know, laziness. It’s hard to want to settle into a solid effort when the prospect of a ‘go at your own pace’ outdoor ride is available.
Whilst getting back into the cycling routine has been fairly straightforward, creating a new daily routine for doing press ups has been harder. I do think I’m over the initial hump now, and it has become a case of grinding through it – and more enjoyably, seeing immediate massive results.
I started with the aim of doing 200 press ups each day for 30 days. But let’s be real. My press up ability has always been utterly garbage. So the first task has been to reach 200 press ups a day.
I started on Sunday 1st May. That day I managed 47 before I was completely exhausted.
Yesterday, 8 days later, I managed to hit 100 for the first time.
That’s not 100 without stopping. Far from it. I am instead doing batches of 10, with a break between. I then work until I cannot do 10. I then try to do 5. I stop as soon as I fail to do 5.
I’m not fast at this, but I’ve so far doubled my ability in 8 days, which I’m super pleased with. I’d hope to have hit 200 a day before the month is out, and hopefully a lot sooner than that. But I take each day as it comes.
Beyond that, it’s still all about just getting in those base kilometres again this week. I’ll take whatever I can, indoor or out. No pressure, just keep riding, keep building back up, and lets see how things look this time next week.