For today’s ride I opted for week 6 day 2 of Zwift’s FTP Builder program. I had expected to be racing this evening, but for two reasons that was not the case.
Firstly there was no Zwift Academy race in a suitable time slot for me. And secondly my legs haven’t really felt up to it.
I have provisionally enrolled in both of the Zwift Academy races – 1 lap of Watopia Hilly route – on both Saturday and Sunday. I don’t expect to ride both, and am favouring Saturday afternoon which – for once – will be a free time slot for me.
The idea of that race is interesting to me. I’m guessing it would be at, or slightly above FTP for the duration. That would be my theory. The strategy would be not to blow up on the climb. Easier said than done under race conditions.
On today’s ride I made a bunch of mistakes. In my quest for efficiency, I tried to screenshot AND blog my ride as it happened. In the end this was a fail. Typing one handed is hard, and my relentless alt+tabbing ended up making me accidentally skip the second 5 minute ramp up about two minutes in.
Also this ride was perhaps more intense than I expected. I recon I could just about get away with riding and blogging a blue zone ride, but green zone is a bit harder going.
My other mistake was to ride Richmond hilly loop only. I wanted to ride both the flat and climbs, admittedly mainly to kill kilometers towards my weekly 100km riding goal.
It turns out that in a workout you don’t seem to get the option to turn, but I only realised this when I pressed the ‘play’ button which skipped yet another interval. They really need a ‘repeat’ or ‘back’ button. Zwift isn’t overly user friendly sometimes.
Generally this workout was a typical FTP Builder ride. Not very interesting, but a good overall workout.
One thing that cracked me up was when climbing the hills, a runner nearly passed me. Then later on, another runner did pass me. I guess that’s what going at 7kph will do for you. How do you not fall off?
I decided that as I’d missed two blocks through my own silly fault, I would make up for it by putting in hard efforts on the two climbs.
As I was in Paused workout mode, I couldn’t see my wattage or cadence on the screen, so had to judge it based on the lines and graphs on the bottom of the screen.
Overall I was happy with the first climb. I have no idea of the time, but it felt strong. The first section went well, then in the little dip I managed to get my gearing in order for the next attack. As the second part of the climb is more bendy, it’s harder to remain consistent, but I did my best.
And then the sprint climb…
Well, again, I put in my best effort here. I was still very much trying to recover from the first climb, with my heart rate, as best I recall, sitting at ~185bpm at the bottom of the climb.
All I remember was seeing 8w/kg at one point, and then as my progress dropped off, the last I saw was ~6.1w/kg. As the graph shows, I really fell off as I reached the top of the climb. But I gave it my very best shot. And again, unfortunately have no idea of my time.
This was a decent workout.
It was nice to get back into the FTP Builder schedule, which whilst typically uninteresting, does feel like I’m slowly making progress.
It might be worthwhile doing a ramp test shortly.
I’m thinking once I have the Zwift Academy 2019 out of the way, I will do a ramp test and see if I have improved. I hope I have. God knows I’m putting in a fair amount of work.
In terms of weight, I’m losing a little bit at the moment. Not huge. I haven’t changed my diet – though have dramatically cut out alcohol, mainly since starting to ride – but for other reasons, too. I think I’m around 70kg now. Cycling is a great way to keep my weight in check, it seems.
I believe I have until the 28th of September to complete the Zwift Academy rides.
I have the race, which sees me through the 4 races or group rides.
Then I need to complete workout’s 7 and 8.
In terms of these, I’m guessing Monday or Tuesday might be a good fit for one of them. It really depends how much this race takes it out of me as to whether I might get to do one of the workouts over the weekend. I’m quite keen to get the Academy over with now.
I have no idea how I managed a 4 minute best on this ride. I have left this screenshot in … for reasons I can’t explain.
🙂
Have a good weekend!
