Zwift Academy 2019 Workout #3: 20sec Power Duration

After a long week in a new job, I was pretty surprised at myself for being as keen as I was to get home early and get into a Zwift Academy workout.

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Having been on early starts and – ideally – early finishes, yesterday I got caught up in a meeting at 3pm which lasted till 4.30pm, which meant I was a whole hour late out of work. That sucked.

On the plus side it meant I could get out today at 3pm and get home in time for the 4.15pm Zwift Academy 2019 Workout #3: 20sec Power Duration session.

And initially, I was really underwhelmed!

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The schedule for the day looked really tame.

Feeling somewhat frustrated at having picked what was seemingly the easiest workout of the Academy for my first ride, I was perhaps a little quick to judge what was to come.

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Fortunately with Zwift’s larger group events, the people can make or break the whole ride, and the crowd today was fantastic.

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Others were voicing similar thoughts to my own. And there was no denying the first two blocks of red efforts – called Sprints by the Zwift on screen instructions – were not quite what I thought this workout had in mind.

There was something a little weird about being told to sprint as fast as I can, then being pegged back to 230w and essentially spinning at 120+rpm sat in the saddle.

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That’s not sprinting.

Fortunately, Zwift seemed to recognise this a little later on. But initially this felt a little untested / misleading.

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Zwift being Zwift, the information on screen was interesting to read and quite informative. I do like this aspect of the game.

Particularly interesting to me was some of the information on how others approach sprinting – pulling the drops up towards themselves? I had no idea.

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It was also interesting to see how Zwift recognised the issues I’ve seen / felt / experienced before with my Tacx Neo 2. There is a lag. It is noticable right at the start of a new section. With this in mind, Zwift gave us 25 seconds for the free ride sprint sections, with the first few seconds being for spinning up.

That said, I think most people just went for it.

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There were two “free ride” blocks in this workout.

They came towards the end of the ride.

By this time you were expected to be fully warmed up. The engine prepped. Good to go.

And did I go for it.

I put out a new personal wattage record. I had no idea what the maximum I managed to put out in the first sprint was, as I was eyes closed or looking down. I remember by the time the first one was over, not only was I very very dead, but I had sworn quite loudly and quite angrily.

Thank God the kids were out of the house.

That said, looking back at the stats I managed 749w which is staggering for me. From where I have come from, the thought of being able to put out 749w back when I started… mega mega progress. Really happy with this.

And the 5 second average of 740w as well, really pleased with this, too.

But boy gosh, good golly, was I pooped.

By the time the second free ride sprint came round I had pretty much emptied the tank. I am not sure how high I got on the second one, but it dropped off significantly quicker than the first.

Now, in my defence, one thing that sucked was that the tongue of my right shoe was really digging into my foot after the first sprint. I hadn’t truly noticed this until I put in the first effort. Something I need to be more mindful of when “lacing up” in the future, I feel.

Even so, I don’t think this cost me a significant amount of watts. In truth I was pretty much spent.

It’s really interesting how this workout played out.

At first it felt like it was going to be too easy.

But by the end of it, I definitely felt worked.

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And deserving a huge mention were the riders alongside me. The banter was great. It really makes Zwifting so much more fun when there’s tons of people around you all going through the same thing.

Easily my biggest “win” of the day was smashing the Circuit Breaker achievement. I had to double check, you win that for breaking 700w. Pretty cool.

1.7 pizza slices / 474 calories.

It’s not going to be a record breaking week for me this week, unfortunately. I’ll be surprised if I break the 100km ride goal I have, in truth.

I don’t feel too bad about this, in all honesty.

It’s been a long, taxing week. 5+ hours I’d normally have free to myself have been spent, instead, sat in a car on a motorway.

Couple that with 6am wake ups, and 10pm bed times, and kids not going to sleep till 9pm… well, I can only do so much.

I’ve said it already, but I’m not sure how many of these Zwift Academy rides I will get through. I am aiming to get one in tomorrow, and another on Sunday. Maybe this is being unrealistic. The game itself suggested a rest day between now and the next one.

My rest day will be Monday, however.