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 weekly review covers the previous two weeks as I was away on holiday for a chunk of both.
Unlike many of my holidays I wasn’t entirely sedentary on this one. This one involved a lot of walking. Unfortunately I really fudged up – I had only 1gb of data on my phone, and as you can imagine I burned that quickly. And by quickly I mean that by day 2 I was out of data. So I didn’t track any of the activity.
Anyway, there was no cycling during that break so nothing I would have written on here.
Here are the past two week’s rides:
- 18th – Taking The FTP Plan Indoors
- 19th – Like A Rude Mr. Miyagi
- 20th – Tender Stem Broccoli Legs
- 29th – Rained Every Day Since
- 30th – Race Pace
It feels like a long time ago now since I did the FTP test. Equally it feels like not enough time has passed for me to need to do another one tomorrow.
The plan lately has always been to do a hard effort (aka the FTP test) every week. It sounds insane, I admit, but there is method to the madness. I’ve discussed this in previous recent weekly reviews so won’t dwell on it, but the gist is to keep doing them so they become normal. That negates the whole anxiety over doing them, and is a good workout in the process.
I wanted to get back on the bike on Friday, but having been on a boat for a week I felt unexpectedly buoyant for ~36 hours after getting off. Basically I felt like I was still on the boat… which is weird because when I was on there I didn’t actually notice the motion very much.
What that did mean is I skipped Thursday (came home late anyway), skipped Friday (weird motion sickness), then got back on for Saturday and Sunday.
I’d had the idea of doing 3 hours between the two days, 1.5 hours each ride. I wanted to stick with the pace partners and just cruise it out. That didn’t really go as planned though as I ended up with a sore right knee on both rides. This is a follow on from me twisting my knee coming down some of the bus stairs whilst on holiday.
It’s a terrible picture – but sadly the best I’ve got. In Nice we saw so many cyclists. I had no idea it is so close to Monaco. Unsurprisingly then, that was where I saw my first S-Works out in the wild. Nice bike, very much the head turner. Oh… yeah, maybe you need to zoom in to see the cyclists heading up the hill. Like I say, terrible photo.
There was a lot of coach / bus travel.
Unfortunately Golden Cheetah persists in being problematic. Therefore I do not have my usual graphs this week. It won’t even start up now. I reckon I need to reboot, but that’s a pain in itself so I skipped that this week.
Weirdly on the weight front I put on a bunch, then went away, ate like a champ, came home and have lost weight every day since. No idea how that works.
So, a weird two weeks all in.
Normal service shall resume now.
However I’m going to have to take it easier than planned this week until the knee pain properly subsides. Fortunately that does mean I get ~60 minutes at a moderate intensity, based on Saturday’s ride. I’ll take it easy and then build it back up.
Then next week it’s FTP Test Tuesday once more. Can’t keep putting it off forever.
Oh, and the Makuri Islands Tour (not the right name, I’m sure) kicks off in November so I will be getting stuck into that this week also.