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.
A slightly different structure to the week’s rides as I had to go away on Wednesday with work. That involved a long day of travel, so it wasn’t a true rest day.
Even so, I feel like I did a good job this week, and am happy with how things went.
Here are this week’s rides:
- 9th – Mary Berry’s Soggy Bottom
- 10th – Tour of Watopia 2023 Ride: Stage 2 – Triple Flat Loops (Standard)
- 12th – Race Watopia: Stage 2 – Flat Route
- 14th – Tour of Watopia 2023 Ride: Stage 2 – Eastern Eight (Long)
Unsurprisingly the overall training load has ticked up recently.
With the start of the Tour of Watopia 2023 Fall my week’s riding intensity has increased. I’m aiming to do both the Standard and Longer rides each week, and that meant doing my first 50km+ ride in a while over the weekend.
It’s actually pretty nice to have the ‘enforced’ structure, and the variation thrown in there. I have been enjoying the Tour rides so far, though the forthcoming week ahead looks to be a challenge.
What I am finding now is that the fatigue is definitely starting to creep in.
On the plus side, this is giving me some kind of mental freedom when racing, in that even though I do always get panned, I am less bothered by it as I’ve already found myself pretty much at race pace for two prior rides during the week.
I have no plans to change this, but I suspect the months Zwift racing results will suffer even more than usual. No big deal.
With the week ahead seeing the Hilly KOM reverse, Titan’s Grove, and then the Epic KOM Reverse, followed by an ascent of the Alpe du Zwift, I expected to feel absolutely thrashed by the end of this one.
It will be interesting to see how much time I have lost on the AdZ though. Yes, I do expect it to be down.
No concerns on the weight front.
I think I should order some of that whey powder for post ride recovery though. That was one of a very small handful of things that I can think of that has changed between now and earlier in the year where my power figures were significantly better.
I did also double check the crank length set on the Garmin this week, and yes it’s at 170 where it should be. I thought somehow that might be out somehow, although potentially it was earlier in the year? I can’t remember. I have meddled with it in the past.
One other thing I tried this week was switching the Garmin from the Tacx Neo to the Favero pedals as the power source, but that made no difference at all. Probably for the best.
So yeah.
A hard week ahead. A couple of big climbs, a race, and … no recovery 😀
But I reckon as much as I am less keen at the time, in the long run it can only be beneficial. Whatever happens, happens. And as long as I make it up them all and cross the lines, the times posted are really very much secondary.
My ego has long since been punched square in the face this year. I would say the only way is up, but I keep proving myself wrong on that front 😀