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 was made up of four riding days, all of which were indoors. The days of riding outside seem a long, long time ago. Fortunately being indoors means ERG mode keeps me in check, as I know I’d have long since blown my restricted schedule if I was left to my own devices.
The one time I did try to push myself above and beyond my normal endurance or lower pacing, I ended up paying the price with a horrendous sore throat. Man alive. I hate writing stuff like this as it seems like I’ve been constantly moaning for weeks now, and I miss my old cheerful* self.
* OK, I was never that cheerful.
This week’s rides were as follows:
- Tuesday – After Burner (Indoor / Zwift)
- Wednesday – Take Two And Call Me In The Morning (Indoor / Zwift)
- Thursday – Looking Up (?) (Indoor / Zwift)
- Sunday – Throat Punch (Indoor / Zwift)
This was another sub 2k calorie week. Even so, I’m not gaining weight. My diet hasn’t changed really, so I’d have expected to maybe gain a few pounds.
Even though this week was comparable to last in terms of calories burned, I did an hour less this week. This is because one of my workouts, the Saturday ride, was at a higher intensity than everything else I’ve done over the last three weeks. Unfortunately I paid the price for that ride immediately after, but before and during I felt right enough.
Its a strange thing to think that you might miss pushing yourself hard, making your body work, and generally getting all sweaty. If I had to travel back in time to a couple of years ago when I did nothing at all, I’d never have imagined it possible that I’d deeply miss being able to push myself to my limits, whether on some hard climb or as part of a race. Actually, I’ve always been competitive when it comes to things like racing, but the real revelation has come in beating my personal goals and challenges, like climbing a hill in a new fastest time – virtual or real – neither of which I can do right now.
Given how I felt on Saturday, I am going to revert back to endurance pacing or below for this week.
I’ve been contemplating doing some kind of “advent of cycling” type thing, where I do a ride every day for 24 days. It’s quite a popular thing in code / computer programming circles. The “advent of code”. Each day has a new code puzzle to solve. That’s not really my bag, weirdly. But doing some kind of cycling activity each day does hold some appeal.
Now, I can’t do much – at least, not much in terms of variety. It would be nice to be able to do lots of challenges involving high intensity work, low intensity stuff, longer endurance rides, and shorter punchy efforts.
But all things considered, I think just doing 24 consecutive rides right now would be a good goal in itself. So, I’m not committing to it, but given that I have had two rest days and tomorrow is the first of December, I think it’s a good place to start.
OK, so all in all, not a brilliant week. Better than last, but that’s not saying much.
I’ve still got plenty of recovering left to do, I feel.
Slow and steady might win the race, but it’s scuppering all my good end-of-year ideas along the way.