Weekly Review October 12th – 18th 2020

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 only consisted of five days riding, with three indoor sessions (all on Zwift), and two outdoor sessions. I fully expect the shift to become 4 and 1 in the forthcoming weeks – as in, 4 indoor rides and 1 outdoor ride. It’s getting colder and darker out there now, and the possibilities of after work rides outdoors are getting fewer and fewer.

Zwift to the rescue?

This week’s rides were as follows:

• Wednesday – Zwift Academy Road: Workout 2 | Sprint Profile (Indoor / Zwift)
• Thursday – Trying Zwift Pace Bots (Indoor / Zwift)
• Friday – After Work Action (Outdoors)
• Saturday – You Won’t Recover Like That (Outdoors)
• Sunday – Zwift Academy Road Group Ride: 1.7 – 2.2 w/kg (Indoor / Zwift)

This last week was more Zwift heavy than any week in recent memory. No bad thing. I’ve been enjoying the structure of the Zwift Academy, and the session with the pacer bots was new and interesting.

I can’t honestly say any ride in particular will remain fondly in my memory for the future, but if I had to pick one that I will likely remember more than the rest, it would be the pacer bots ride. Simply because it was new, and different.

There seems to be so much potential with the pacer bots that I can’t help but feel that this will become another “opportunity lost” on the part of Zwift. I covered this in more detail in that post, and I felt even more frustrated after seeing further potential in the comments.

One of this week’s rides was to target my 5, 10, and 20 second sprint power.

I found I did quite a bit more sprinting this week than I might otherwise have done on a typical week. Sprinting isn’t my forte.

I tried my absolute best during the Zwift Academy workout to set a new PB for my 5 second power, if nothing else. Sadly I came up well short. I’m not really sure what else I could have done. Sure, I messed up the first effort, but I definitely tried my all in the remaining efforts.

Bit disappointed not to have done better.

One concerning thing coming out of this week was that every single ride was below the green band set by Garmin.

What does this mean?

Training load is the sum of your exercise load scores from the past 7 days. It’s rated low, optimal or high based on your fitness level and training history.

From the Garmin help icon next to 7-day training load

Well, I don’t really know what I did differently this week versus any other week if I’m being honest.

If I had to guess, this is some kind of weighted average based on last weeks much bigger effort (because I was off work) so relatively this week I am way down – literally half pretty much every metric. That’s about the only reasonable explanation I can come up with. Also, very little I can do to mitigate that – aside from winning the lottery and getting to ride my bike whenever the hell I like.

About the only other thing to cover this week is my poor, poor shoulder.

So, a long while back now, right at the start of summer, I managed to fall off my bike and break my wrist. The wrist thing sucked. But it healed. What unfortunately remains is the shoulder pain. As I stuck out my right hand, all the shock (or whatever) must have travelled up my stiff arm and really damaged my shoulder.

And ever since, whenever I ride outdoors, my right shoulder aches. Not just during the ride, but hours / days after.

I know it’s to do with the crappy UK road surface. And there’s very little I can do about that. It never happens on Zwift / indoors.

As I’ve been doing a lot of riding outdoors, I’ve been wondering if there’s such a thing as a road bike with suspension. Well, it turns out there is…

The Specialized Roubaix.

It has some kind of suspension built into the front bars.

It’s also £3500 quid.

I’ve also found the Trek Domane has something somewhat similar. The thing is, I love my bike. So the thought of getting a fancier version – rather than changing brands entirely – is quite appealing.

But that cost though. I mean, it’s about 4x the value of my car. No joke. I know my car is an ancient piece of junk – but hey, I never drive anywhere, so why buy a fancy one?

On the flip side I cycle all over the joint, so why not get a fancy one?

Well, I’m seriously considering it.

But.

Not until the start of the new outdoor riding season in 2021. As above, I think most of my forthcoming rides are going to be indoors for the foreseeable.

I genuinely wonder if I’ll be able to hold out hitting the buy button until then. The only thing stopping me, really, is the fact that the 2021 model will likely come out soon. Oh, and that price tag, of course.

Any thoughts welcome on this bike, the shoulder pain, other ideas… all appreciated.