Zwift Academy 2019 Workout #4: Anaerobic Power Development

For this evening’s ride I took on Zwift Academy 2019 Workout #4: Anaerobic Power Development. After yesterday’s workout repeat, it felt good to get another of the Zwift Academy 2019 workouts done and in the books.

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Ok, so straight up: I thought this one was going to be easy.

The workout plan, on “paper”, looks really straightforward.

The on screen workout prompts called me out on this right away. But I kinda didn’t believe them. Hey, I’ve been riding for ~5 months, I know best :/

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The workout starts as pretty much all the other Zwift Academy 2019 rides have done – with a 9 minute ramp up, featuring some varying cadence blocks. I quite like this, and will be incorporating this into my future free rides.

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I’m still struggling with cadence control.

I find it very challenging to keep to e.g. 75rpm, or 95rpm, or whatever, on a consistent basis. If anything I kinda over think it. I watch the number on the screen, then I start to think about what I’m doing, and that makes me drift – usually upwards – in revolutions.

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One thing that isn’t very clear going into this workout is what to do in each block.

Should I use ERG mode?

Should I not?

When’s best to turn it off?

Will the workout complete if half of the blocks don’t have the full stars?

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Well for what it’s worth, the on screen prompts do tell you approximately when to turn ERG mode off (but not back on).

And as best I can tell, you’re supposed to do the first block in ERG, and then the remaining two blocks without ERG.

Also yes, the workout registers as complete in the Zwift Academy 2019 progress tracker if you don’t get full stars. At least, it has for me.

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With the warm up done, I have to say I was feeling over confident about this workout.

How hard could it be? Seven minutes of effort? Pfft.

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Following the on screen prompts, I kept the ERG mode on for the first high intensity block.

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This felt overly easy. I didn’t capture it, but I saw on screen that I hit over 140rpm during this first block.

Honestly, I thought I should have turned ERG mode off … or something. But the prompts had said to use ERG… confusing.

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The second repeat went similarly, just a quick blitz for 10 seconds at some ridiculous cadence.

If anything I felt like I might damage my knees spinning that fast.

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Had I even broke a sweat at this point?

Yes, of course. I sweat profusely. It’s my one failing in life 🙂

But no, this wasn’t very taxing. I was feeling ridiculously confident by this point.

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The real challenging stuff was still yet to come. I knew that much.

And then I got prompted to turn ERG mode off for these next blocks.

Ok Zwift, I’m listening.

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Unfortunately, in my haste to capture all the on-screen prompts and take screenshots, and then switch to the Workout menu in the app, and then press the ERG mode button… all whilst riding and trying to make the arch entry go smoothly…

Well, I messed up.

I didn’t realise for the first block but I had ERG mode still on.

In my haste I must have clicked it twice.

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Not a huge loss. I still pushed as hard as I could.

But with ERG mode on there was a “fake” resistance, and somewhat frustratingly, this being my first effort I was at my most powerful for this one… so I kinda blew my shot.

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I’d given it a full gas effort though here so I was absolutely bushed.

Fortunately the recovery times on this workout were overly sufficient. At least, they were for this block.

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For the second and third blocks I made sure ERG mode was off.

Even with a 6 minute recovery(!) between blocks, going full gas three times in a row is tough.

And as above, I think I blew my “best effort” shot. Oh well.

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The second effort, without ERG mode, was absolutely more challenging. I could feel the difference immediately.

I pushed more wattage, but it wasn’t my maximum. If that makes sense. It was my maximum that I had left.

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Same went for the third block. I sustained longer on the third block, but at a lower overall wattage.

Each 30 second blast took me about 3 minutes to fully recover from, as the heart rate graph will attest too.

I was truly thrashed after each bash.

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The recovery after this block was 6 minutes at 110w, followed by another 2 minute at 100w.

By this point I kinda knew I had been over confident in my appraisal. I was feeling worked. But not dead, thanks to those hefty recovery periods.

Again, prompted by Zwift to de-activate ERG mode for the next block, I was better prepared.

However, I was also much more apprehensive of 3 minutes at ~250w out of ERG mode than I had been about 40 minutes prior.

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The prompt was telling me to aim for 90-100rpm.

Well, I tried.

It took me about 30 seconds to stabilise my wattage to ~250w outside of ERG.

The first minute was fine.

With 8 minutes rest I had plenty in the legs to push through this one.

The next 30 seconds were alright, too.

And then the following 1.5 minutes went really rather slowly.

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I’d pushed harder on this than I was supposed too. As I finished I was around 260w+.

That’s not that I had tons in the tank. Not by any means. It was because I wasn’t in control of my cadence and was simply pushing as hard as I could to get the pedals round to finish the timer.

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I was absolutely pooped after this one.

And here’s where my ego got a reality check.

6 minutes of recovery?

It sounds plenty.

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But those 6 minutes dissolved in a blink of an eye.

I’d mucked around a bit on alt+tab in YouTube trying to find another tune to keep me going to the end of the workout.

Once I’d got back into Zwift I had about a minute left and my heart rate was still in the high 140s.

Mild panic? Sure, why not.

That second effort was brutal.

I was out of the saddle for about 40% of it, as I was really struggling to hit the wattage sat down.

I’m not sure if that was technically allowed, but I wasn’t prompted otherwise.

I’d have definitely preferred to have managed it seated. But I didn’t have it in me.

By the end of the second block I was worn out. The second block was waaay tougher than the first, and my performance was under the expected 250w, more like ~230-240.

I definitely gave it my best shot, so that’s all I could have done. And I finished it, so that’s something.

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Obviously this wasn’t going to be easy.

I was fully lulled into a false sense of security early on, and got a firm reality check by the end of the ride.

Good. I needed it.

Positives then:

I finished another Zwift Academy 2019 workout. That’s 4 done now, 50% of the way there. I’ve also done 2 of the 4 group rides / races, so I am truly 50% done.

Burning 480 calories after work? I’ll take it.

It just about covers the Tesco meal junk I’m putting into myself.

Btw – trivia from yesterday, it was an Innocent Smoothie Boost Shot.

Check out the cadence dip on that final block. Mercy me.

All in all I enjoyed this one. It was different I will give them that. And not without a few typos in the prompts. They really need to improve their QA process.

I’m at 50km on the week now, and will hopefully get another ~30km in tomorrow. I’m aiming to hit up another Zwift Academy workout, but this may not happen. We shall see.