Finally! The finish line approaches for the Zwift Academy 2023. This series has felt like a long and tough challenge, particularly in the last couple of weeks.
The final ride – for me – was to tackle Workout #6, which according to the 101 TSS ranking put this one at third of the six.
Now, as is very much the custom at this point, I made something of a mistake going into this one. And then I made another mistake during the ride. Not excuses, just mistakes.
OK, so mistake #1 was not quite realising what the ride entailed.
I looked at the workout before hand on Friday night. In truth I didn’t think it looked that bad.
Here’s how it shows on Whats On Zwift:
Not that tough, right?
Yeah.
So there’s the initial 20 minute block which, at 90% I didn’t think sounded too bad.
Then there’s 10 minutes at FTP, which after 20 minutes might be more gruelling than usual, but still, nothing crazy.
The gap between those two was only three minutes which felt stingy, but not worrying.
After that, a nice 5 minute breather before into what I very wrongly assumed was the last effort of the day. Four 2 minute efforts at 115% FTP, or 270w in my case. Then 5 minute cool down and home for tea and medals.
Yeah… so first mistake of the day being not realising this one ended with a 5 minute max effort. I first knew about this when I read it on the on-screen prompt and was like … oh, expletive deleted.
In hindsight though, perhaps not knowing was better for me all round.
It didn’t make it any easier, but at least I had zero anxiety going into the ride.
The second mistake was in how I ended up tackling that final 5 minute effort.
Now, let’s be real here. You aren’t reading the blog of someone even remotely in contention for that pro contract. And truthfully, nor would I want one. The life of a professional cyclist is not one for me.
But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t try to give it my best shot, if only for my own personal sense of accomplishment.
The problem was that after the four 2 minute efforts I started to get that horrible golf ball type cramp feeling in my right calf. It wasn’t killer, but it was niggling and I was considering stopping and stretching… but equally that would screw up the whole build up of the workout up until that point. It would mean skewing my final stats, even if only slightly.
Instead I tried stretching it whilst still clipped in, and did a bit of stood up pedalling during the 5 minute recovery block.
Did that impact my final metrics at all? Yeah… possibly. Not by much, but I guess I went the other way. Rather than stop, I ended up going a little too hard during the 5 minute breather.
But like I say, my results would be nothing more than a line on the 10’s of thousands of other deleted riders that never even got close to being analysed by the pro teams.
Going into the 5 minute effort I was far from fresh. I know that was the idea. But after first learning about the 5 minute effort requirement during the opening minutes of the ride, I was wondering what number to aim for pretty much from then on.
In the end I settled on 280w, with the idea being that I’d do 4x 275w efforts first so be used to the idea.
As each of those 2 minute efforts slayed me, that number started to drop. I think by the time I went into the 5 minute challenge I had 260w in mind.
The on-screen prompts suggested not starting out at a 10/10 on the exertion scale… whoops, I’ve been there before. So I started lower. Quite a bit lower, around FTP whilst trying to find a rhythm.
Then I quickly started to tire as I tried to ramp that up. By two minutes in I was lagging, and a short connection drop didn’t help. Fortunately the cramp feeling seemed to have made a sharp exit, not wanting to stick around whilst pains bigger brother popped in for a chat.
In the second to last minute I had to drop to an easier gear which definitely didn’t help the average, losing me about 5w from the 270w figure I’d set in the first 3 minutes.
I got out of the saddle for around the last ~45 seconds. This was the second mistake. I could have done probably double that, punching up the average even though it would inevitably have cratered towards the end. As it was, I finished strong, meaning I probably had a bunch left in the tank.
All in all, a mistimed and misjudged effort.
I imagine the pro teams were looking for either consistency from start to finish, or more ideally a strong start and an steady rise up to the finish.
Either way, it makes no difference.
Anyway, it was definitely good to get through the final effort in some kind of fashion. I didn’t give up, or blow up. That’s something.
What I will say is the finish line on-screen stuff was really underwhelming.
For what has been a long (2 month) process, harder than last year for sure, it really felt it went out with a fizzle rather than a bang. Maybe there would have been more of a congratulatory vibe in the chat on the group ride… but I missed that by 4 minutes, so I was on my solo effort throughout.
It would have been nice for Coach Dan to have written something a little better than his pretty blatant copy / paste ending as seen on all the other workouts.
So that’s that then, until next year.
For me the plan is something of an easier ride week next week. I want to do my race early in the week, then an endurance ride on Thursday, with the FTP test on Saturday. After that I’m done pretty much for 2023.
