Weekly Review November 28th – December 4th 2022

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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. 

OK, so a few things to cover this week. For once I have been able to get a lot of nice looking screengrabs because Training Peaks has given me a free month for December, which meant I suddenly had all their dashboard things to pick from.

Probably the highlight of the week for me was finishing off the Race Makuri series, which I wrongly categorised as the Tour of Makuri Islands, only realising my mistake half way through. By then it was too late so I bundled the lot together. Whoops.

The other thing this week would be the start of the Advent of Cycling 2022. More on that below.

Here are this week’s rides:

Even with three Zone 2 rides this week, Garmin is reporting that I have a low aerobic shortage. Perhaps this is a lagging indicator and next week will see that looking differently purely based on this week’s work. For now, unless I hear differently, that’s the assumption I’m working too.

Overall it was an easier week than the past three weeks because with the Tour of Makuri Islands done, and the two Stage 5 races being short and sharp, the actual work intensity was lesser than it has been.

I’m moving onwards from Race Makuri into the Zwift Race Like A Pro series. That starts tomorrow.

It’s fair to say I won’t be racing quite like a pro. I’ll be racing like a middle aged bloke who is never going to be much beyond an also ran. But hey, at least I’m trying.

Weight-wise, still in the 66’s which, to be honest, I have tried to bump up a little. Turns out eating junk is harder than I thought and so no changes yet.

Actually I went out yesterday for my birthday and ate a massive meal and pudding washed down with two glasses of wine, came home and I’d lost 2.2lb… so who the hell knows how that works. Visit Krispy Kreme, lose a stone. Magic.

Overall though, no concerns. Good to be tracking it.

Some interesting graphs came out of Training Peaks.

The one that I got most value from would be the second one below. That’s the last years worth of riding data and sees my best efforts being around the 5 and 20 minute mark. Unsurprising really, given most of my riding is the sub hour mark.

Considering where I started to where I am now, it’s night and day.

As I said above about race like a pro, it’s kinda telling that my graphs are only borderline good in two aspects, and the rest are generously named moderate and fair. I suppose no one would stay subscribed if they saw their 1 minute effort didn’t even make the shocking or rubbish cut off points.

Lastly then this week there is the ‘Advent of Cycling’.

This is a challenge I set myself in December back in 2020 but didn’t repeat in December 2021.

I’m pretty sure the reason for not repeating was that I felt 24 days without a rest was a bad idea.

But like alcohol and hangovers, give it enough time (a year in this case) and one tends to forget one’s mistakes. And as they say, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

So it very much looks like I’m doing it again this year.

I still haven’t formally committed to it, but so far I’m 5 days in and haven’t skipped a day.

The thing I’m doing this year is utilising the <30 minute Zwift workouts to do short stints on Monday and Friday. The rest of the week will remain unchanged, unless I start to flag. Then I might change things up. But for now that is the plan.

With the Race Like A Pro series, my regular workouts, and the shorter workouts to complete there is plenty happening over the next 7 days.

Depending on how I feel after Tuesday’s race I may look to get in another one later in the week. Crit City is a map I haven’t done in ages, so I’d love to have another blast at that.

Like I said back at the start, there’s always a requirement for people like me to prop up the numbers at the back of the race 🙂

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