I don’t know how it keeps happening, but I keep getting trolled by these Zwift Academy 2019 workouts. I look at the schedule, I feel overly confident, and then by the end I am dead as a dodo.
I opted to take part in workout #6 – Chase the Breakaway – on Watopia. The current “hot map” is Yorkshire, which I haven’t yet ridden.
As I finished this ride today, there was one of the Yorkshire Recon Rides starting up. It had over 600 registered riders. I’m a bit gutted to be missing out on Yorkshire, and these special rides.
But… I have done my Zwift Academy workout for the week, and didn’t want to do a workout on Yorkshire. I’d rather ride it properly, first. So hopefully, tomorrow night at 6:05pm, I’ll take part in the next Yorkshire Recon Ride. That said, 6:05 for 55 minutes is such a crappy time for me – right on tea time. We shall see.
As with the other Zwift Academy rides, the warmup included an interval at a lower cadence. This has become common place now, and will be something I retain from this series.
I opted to ride this workout on the Watopia Hilly route. This actually worked out really well, with the ride marker points – described on screen – almost tying up directly with what I saw on screen. A happy coincidence, I’m sure.
My expectation, having looked at the interval schedule, was that the hardest part would be the 10 minutes at 200w / FTP.
However, having recently just done something similar, I was fairly confident I’d be OK for this one.
Going somewhat off grid, I also decided to do the full gas efforts at max power. In other words, turning off ERG mode whenever coming to a sprint section.
What this meant was that I’d be aiming to “empty the tank” for the first hard effort, and immediately dropping into 3 minutes at FTP – as though that’s some kind of recovery.
As such, right from the off I was hard at it, and sweating buckets.
However, I do think this was the right thing to do.
30 seconds at 375w, in ERG mode, I’d have been doing some 110rpm spinning or something daft. That’s usually how it goes. I definitely think turning off ERG mode for “the hard bits” is the right move for me.
There’s no denying, this one was a hard effort, particularly coming off the back of a true full gas effort.
It probably would have been easier to stick in ERG mode, all things considered. I guess I’m not here for an easy life.
As usual, Zwift Academy on screen tips were interest and informative.
During this 5 minute recovery block I learned bits and pieces about racing out in the real world.
With a full 5 minutes at 100w, I was feeling fairly fresh for the start of the next block. If anything, 5 minutes felt overly long.
Again, this arrogance lulled me into a false sense of confidence.
Once more I decided I’d knock ERG mode off for the max efforts.
Genuinely I have no idea why it goes from 10 seconds at max to 50 seconds at 100w.
There’s no denying that putting out 10 seconds of sprint takes its toll, but 50 seconds recovery after 5 minutes of light riding? I don’t know… this one felt, dare I say, comfortable?
Whilst my second sprint wasn’t as strong as the first, I now had 7 minutes of recovery, which again, felt slightly too long.
I’m not sure how this pans out at much higher FTPs, but for me, I felt like this 7 minutes might be better placed after the forthcoming 10 minute effort instead. I’m sure the placements are no accident, however.
There was a bunch of interesting science stuff displayed during this recovery block.
I had my little girl sat watching for company, so was only screenshotting whenever things changed, but wasn’t paying a huge amount of attention, in truth. Finding out about her school day was vastly more important to me.
After 7 minutes I was almost fully refreshed. My legs weren’t too tight, and my early confidence remained regarding the 10 minute interval. This wasn’t even phased by the 2 minutes at 160w to start.
It doesn’t have to be said, however, that whilst I knew I could do this, I didn’t expect it to be easy, by any means.
I had still just done a bunch of hard efforts, even with the long recovery block. I wasn’t truly fresh. And 10 minutes at FTP isn’t easy for me at any point.
The key, as suggested on screen, was to keep a high cadence. I was hoping to hit around 90rpm for the duration.
What I found was that I was anything between 80-95rpm, not really keeping a huge amount of control throughout.
This is frustrating, and still something I continue to work on.
I understand my legs will tire. That much I cannot really control, beyond continuing to practice / exercise.
What frustrates me is that the more I focus on a steady cadence, the harder it becomes to maintain it.
It’s almost like the more conscious thought I give it, the harder it becomes to maintain consistency. If I just “let go”, I kinda forget about it, and generally end up more consistent. But then I remember to think about it, and it all goes out the window.
About the most interesting thing to happen in this 10 minute block was that my heart rate didn’t go above 180bpm, which is nice. Means I might actually get to see my grandkids one day.
On this subject of max heart rate I asked on Reddit and got some interesting answers.
With the 10 minute effort out of the way, the (now) short 5 minute recovery felt tough.
Before I knew it, almost half of the recovery period had disappeared, and between drinking some water and trying to deliberately lower my cadence, I was almost upon the next block.
Again, this next section consisted of a hard effort. A bizarre 13 second affair.
Once more I decided to gun it. ERG mode off.
This would be an out of the saddle affair.
I think this one turned out to be my best sprint of the whole ride. I guess ‘cus it was shorter. Even so, this surprised me after having just done a long interval.
My heart rate was typically high after this effort, but not the highest of the ride. I’m guessing high 180s here.
This was followed by a mercilessly short 2 minute recovery at 110w, and this was where I started to really feel the pain of this workout.
What lay ahead was not trivial.
Fittingly, the last block was all about the climb, and being on Watopia’s Hilly Route, the first effort was perfectly timed to hit the KOM.
As this was a 3 minute effort at a lower intensity (aka not a sprint), I remained in ERG mode for this one.
I found this a struggle, particularly the final minute. I believe I was out of the saddle in this one, though can’t remember fully as it’s a few hours ago at this point.
After this one I was really feeling it. And we had really only just begun the final block.
With just 2 minutes recovery, the forthcoming ramp interval looked really scary.
I knew I’d be recovering well into both green intervals.
The mistake I made, for sure, was following the Zwift Academy on screen prompt advice here.
It was suggesting to keep a cadence of 90rpm or higher for the full 6 minutes.
I know this makes ERG mode intervals easier.
But my legs were saying… heck no.
My mistake happened early.
I started too high cadence.
During the 160w block I was trying to push for 90rpm, but mentally I was conflicted – thinking I’d likely be much better staying around 80rpm for extra recovery.
I’d need the legs for the last 3 blocks.
I definitely should have listened to my body, rather than followed the on screen prompt advice.
After the green blocks were over, knowing it was only going to get harder… and harder from here on out, I was feeling it both physically and mentally.
Easily the hardest blocks were the last two – as would be expected. But I mean, these were really challenging.
At one minute each, that was about the only saving grace. Even so, I remember looking up on the fifth block and being hugely concerned that only 10 seconds had ticked off, and I was expecting more like 20-25 or so. Yikes.
Fortunately what saw me through here was knowing it was all over at the end.
Whilst my last block was a total grind, and dipped a few times as I struggled home, I did make it all the way. That’s definitely something.
Once again I underestimated the Zwift Academy workouts.
Only two more remain now, and as displayed on screen, my next one is workout #7, VO2 Max.
My, that sounds fun.
I expect to complete this next workout later in the week.
Tomorrow will be Yorkshire, whether free ride or one of the Yorkshire Recon rides.
I still need to do a final group ride or race to complete that part of the Zwift Academy 2019 series.
I’d like to do a race. And having had to stay ~25 minutes late at work today, that should mean one day this week I can finish early enough to get home in time for a 4pm Zwift race.
With racing in mind, it would make sense to have an easy ride tomorrow, or Thursday at least. Racing is hard as hell.
All this said, I’m happy to get an hour on the board for the week, and to have done ~28km already.
Yesterday was a rest day, and likely I won’t beat last week’s 140km this week. Even so, I’d like to get close.
One thing about this ride was the “gentle” introduction to ramping up. I guess I’ll be fresher on a true ramp test, but those ramp ups are hard, hard work.
OK, enough rambling from me. It’s late, and I need to sleep.
