This morning I wanted to get a Zwift session in before heading outside. My aim was to do 30km on the day, with whatever I didn’t cover on Zwift being done outside. This turned out to be 10km on Zwift.
The reason for hitting Zwift firstly was to test out a few changes I made to my setup over night.
This change was pretty straightforward. I did some reading and found out that the likely reason for the Favero Assioma DUO pedals reporting a higher average wattage may be because my crank length was setup incorrectly in the Garmin Edge 530.
Sure enough, I had gone with the default value of 172.5, whereas after checking the Specialized website, my bike’s crank length should be 170. Whoopsiedoodle.
I changed this value up, but forgot to change up my weight in Zwift. I guess that has very little bearing on a workout, but I definitely need to make sure I’ve done this ahead of tomorrow’s Stage 1 race. Those extra 2kgs are a big deal when racing.
As the weather is absolutely lovely up in the glorious North West of the UK I only really wanted a short indoor warm up. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out one of Zwift’s new workouts.
With this in mind today I did Zwift’s Vault workout:
Improve your ability to recover under pressure and dig deep when fatigued! The interval structure of this “tempo with surges” workout has the surges looking like a vaulted ceiling upon workout review. This is a beginner to intermediate workout.
Zwift’s blurb for The Vault workout
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this one. I just wanted a steady ERG mode effort at varying intensities to check that the Garmin Edge 530 and the Tacx Neo were reporting approximately the same numbers.
I’d read that the pedals should, in theory, read about 3-5% higher (at most) than what the Neo would report. I don’t understand why – guessing it’s the location of the measurement sensors or whatever – but this had to be better than the 20-30% differences I was seeing.
Happy to report: things seem within that 3-5% now.
Though sadly this does mean my recent outdoor rides stats are skewed. But whatever.
Although it doesn’t say it in game on Zwift (as far as I am aware), this workout is marked as a “beginner to intermediate” affair on the Zwift website.
I hadn’t known this prior to doing the ride, but I’d agree, this one is likely not a hugely suitable candidate for me on a regular basis.
I’d equate it as a taster session of The Wringer.
That said, I enjoyed it.
I’d say it might be a harder workout if you’re not used to riding at 90-100rpm. For me, 95rpm is my ideal workout cadence, so no issues really. Aside from trying to take a few screenshots…. my new setup is a bit messy, so I’m still all over at the end of the harder intervals whilst trying to find my phone and what not.
With this one done, my stats seeming to match up close enough, and a lovely blue sky outside, I was keen to get the bike off the turbo, get the back wheel on, and head out for a proper stint.
The only problem being that today is supposed to be a bit of a recovery day ahead of racing tomorrow.
But I simply couldn’t resist a bit of sun.
I’m unsure when I’d do this workout again.
I’d certainly recommend it if you’re new to Zwift, or cycling in general. At just 20 minutes and ~10km, it felt incredibly short for me.
It did fit the bill as a good pre-ride warm up though.
And with that, I was off outdoors.
