This ride was, unfortunately, absolutely plagued with bugs. I don’t know if this is a problem with the workout itself, my setup, or a combination of both. But large parts of this ride simply didn’t work as they should have done. Though I did manage to complete it, it was a bit of a lacklustre affair as a result.
So, what went wrong?
Well, honestly… I don’t know.
At least, not technically.
For whatever reason, ERG mode just didn’t seem to work right during this ride.
It seemed to work fine during the warm up phase, and when we got to the part where I had to do some efforts, it just wouldn’t seem to respond properly.
An example of this can be seen below. And at first, I thought this was a failing of my own.
So what’s happening here is Zwift is telling me to start spinning up to 115rpm to prep for 30 seconds at 230w.
I did this, but when crossing the arch, no matter how hard I span, I couldn’t get much past 150w. It was like ERG was locked at that wattage.
This happened in ever interval.
I thought, maybe I had either some connectivity issues, or my pairings were incorrect.
Later on in the ride, I paused the workout and resumed. That didn’t make any difference. I also tried pausing the ride, unpairing, and re-pairing – switching from ANT+ to Bluetooth, but again, no difference.
I also tried turning ERG off and on inside the Zwift Companion App, which seemed to make no difference whatsoever.
I’m tempted to say it’s this workout that is at fault.
Anyway, some parts of this ride were done as free ride sections. And they did work.
Which, again, makes me suspect ERG was just very faulty during this ride. Hopefully not for everyone or stage 6 of the ZA2020 is going to be causing huge community uproar.
I took the opportunity to try and better my sprints from early in the Academy.
The first three were done seated, and I feel I gave a solid effort, especially in the second and third efforts.
As the minimum Zwift can do is a 10 second free ride, I used the first few seconds to spin up the pedals in the hardest gear, and then I really let rip for the final 5 seconds or so.
Unfortunately, another issue with this ride was that my heart rate monitor failed me yet again.
I’ve now ordered a replacement strap:
As frankly, this constant “will it work or not” thing is doing my head in.
I should have done this sooner.
Anyway, the ride started with me at a steady 220bpm, so that will have completely skewed my Garmin stats, no doubt about it. I wonder if I can override this in their app. Need to check that.
It would have been nice to track my heart rates during these sprints, honestly.
I felt pretty good after the first three 6 second efforts, and with a nice 4 minute breather after the third set, I was primed and ready to smash out a new PB on the 20 second max effort attack.
I gave it what felt like everything on that first effort, but was irked to have “only” reached a max of 980w.
That’s what I saw on the screen.
I was super keen to try and break 1000w – something I haven’t ever done before.
Resolving to try even harder during the next effort, and with a 4 minute breather to recover, I willed myself to do better…
And was frankly amazed to hit 1000w, especially after the first effort really felt like I’d emptied the tank.
Sadly, Zwift didn’t record the same figure. Zwift still has me down as the high 980’s, I believe. Shame.
But it was super cool to see that figure on the Garmin. This comes after yesterday when I weighed in at 10 stone 4 lb. I’m now lighter than ever (not such a good thing) but putting out my all time best power ever (a better thing). So, if I can put a bit of weight on – god knows how – and keep the power, I should be in a great place for the new years outdoor riding.
I felt really good after the first two sprints, but couldn’t do anything quite so stellar on the third effort, sadly.
Still, a new personal best felt great.
I was quite keen to hit the last of the three distinct sections of this ride today.
The idea was to replicate the kind of conditions seen in every Zwift race I’ve ever ridden.
Essentially at the end of the race, you get into a period where everyone around you is slowly starting to ramp. And within the final kilometer or 1500m, the tempo kicks up again, and again within 500m, and then that last max effort sprint to the line…
It’s one of the best bits of the Zwift racing experience. And a bloody good workout.
The idea that the Zwift Academy was replicating this felt cool.
Alas, it didn’t work for me.
Yet again, I had these super frustrating ERG mode issues. The only part that did work was the last 10 second max sprint when ERG mode disengaged. I tried turning ERG off, I tried mucking about with the gears… nothing seemed to work.
I can only conclude this workout is broken.
Or worse, my Tacx Neo is broken. But I sincerely hope not.
I checked after the ride and I’m on the latest firmware. I don’t think it’s the Neo, to be fair. I think this was (another) Zwift bodge. Fail.
Right, so that’s that.
Two more workouts remaining for the Zwift Academy 2020. Another one on the cards for tomorrow. Then maybe a rest day on Friday.
I’m just glad to be on track to get this finished up before my sub expires. The bugs are driving me absolutely nuts!
