This afternoon it was hoofing it down – as it has been across the rest of the UK, I believe – and so I ducked out a little early from work in order to beat the traffic.
As it happens, the motorway was relatively quiet, and so I got home in good time.
With a touch extra time to use, I opted for the FTP Builder Week 7 Day 1 ride, which at 1 hour 20 minutes is on the longer side of things for a weeknight for me.
This was standard FTP Builder fare really:
Long, and not particularly interesting.
I opted to do this ride on the Volcano Circuit, simply because I haven’t ridden on this route in a while and wondered how many laps I could get through in the time given that I’d only be riding at 130w.
As a spoiler: I managed 8 laps.
As if Zwift use the real world weather pattern, it was chucking it down pretty much throughout this ride. Just as it was outside the window.
I had plenty of time to kill on this ride. And getting through the minutes was a bit of a chore, truth be told.
For this reason I’m glad I opted for a short circuit. At least I had the lap counter to look forward too every 8.5 minutes or so.
In truth I was largely alt+tabbed for this one. I opted to watch a tech course I’m slowly working through, and listen to a bit of music.
The longer intervals – 25 minutes at 130w – weren’t too strenuous, but they were more tiring than I’d have expected. This was felt in the thighs predominantly, and the arse.
Whilst not the most interesting of rides it’s really fun to look back at the last time I did 8 laps of the Volcano Circuit.
That would have been (afaik) for the Tour of Watopia: Stage 2 – Road To Ruins. As a side note I thought the road to ruins was the name for the Alpe course… ?
Anyway, looking back it’s funny to see I averaged 150w round that time. I remember being exhausted after that, and thinking 8 laps / 1 hour on the bike was huge. How times have changed.
One of the biggest reasons for starting this blog way back when was / is to give myself the opportunity to look back and see how far I’ve progressed. And whilst I’ve not yet broken 200w as my FTP (my biggest goal since starting riding), I have come on tremendously over the last 6 or 7 months.
Anyway, whilst not the most interesting of activities, it was a great start to the week. Monday, 500+ calories, 37km on the board, looking good.
