Already very sweaty and wet from doing Workout #5 in the same session, I was more than warmed up for this ride.
This one caught me off guard as I hadn’t realised there were only 15 second gaps between the first 5x 30’s.
In fact I only realised this on the fourth effort – yes, full marks for paying attention.
However I’m not that blind. The reason I didn’t notice was that my YouTube music playlist had just unexpectedly ended and I was alt / tabbed out of Zwift lining up some new tunes. Each time I tabbed back in I expected to have plenty of time but it always seemed short. On the fourth recovery I figured out why… what a chimp.
Actually these mini efforts were decent. I liked them. They made me work and by the fifth I was glad they were over.
Would I have felt the same if that was the first hard effort of the day? Who knows.
The on screen prompts were saying this would be an 8 out 10 in terms of difficult.
With the first block done, I have to say I felt this was overly cautious. With what remained, this was definitely feeling easier than that.
In a bid to make the second block a bit harder I opted to spin fast.
For a 280w effort I’d usually think 95rpm would be ideal.
For this I went at 110rpm.
That was actually about my limit for a 2 minute push. It did leave me questioning whether I’d have found it easier had I gone at a slower cadence.
Anyway, had the two combined workouts been harder I would have maybe struggled to get to the point where I’m at now.
And that point is, somehow I have managed to get the entire Zwift Academy 2022 workouts done this week. Pretty impressed with myself for that… not so much for the difficulty but the commitment.
All that remains is to get the Finish Line ride done.
Now, I have to do that ride tomorrow morning.
But the kicker is I’m about to go out for my tea. And that’s made a little different by it being ‘date night’ up town with my wife. It’s a long, looooong while since I’ve been out like this. Maybe 5 or more years…
I’d quite like to have a drink.
The thing is, I don’t want a hang over. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow feeling awful.
Whatever happens I have to do the Finish Line ride tomorrow. So yeah, I’d rather not do it feeling like trash.
But I don’t think I’m going to be putting in a stellar performance. That’s partly because I’m not very good, but also partly because after doing a full week’s worth of rides like this (including the Base Line ride), I’m feeling it in my legs. Three hard efforts… can I do better? I doubt it.
Congrats on finishing the workouts!
I’m dreading the finish line ride.
I need to beat my baseline efforts
Short:690w
Medium:414w
Long:268w
I’m anxious just thinking about it! I think I’ll keep the baseline numbers in front of me and try to aim for a few watts above.
I was not in the mood for the Finish Line ride this morning, at all. Not hung over, but not feeling up to it by any means.
For me it was the medium effort I was most anxious about. After the Base Line ride I wanted to puke by the top. I fudged up the entry due to some fan issues, but yeah… badly managed, badly timed, and just overall totally unpleasant.
Do you happen to know if the ghost rider functionality now works if you do these rides outside of the ZA sessions?
I tried keeping my numbers in front of me for my last 4DP session and I reckon that hurt my effort. Once I fell off the cliff on the first effort I lost the mental willpower to keep up on the rest. Having the on screen timers & the other ZA group riders was more beneficial to me today for sure.
Good luck with yours. End of the day it’s only yourself you’re racing against. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But it’s all better than being on the couch.
Yeah once you blow up, its all over.
I did get the ghost rider drop me on my cool down ride today.
I did better than expected on the Finishline ride. I went in not feeling it, but aiming to give it my best shot. I think having the previous numbers also helped, especially on the Volcano KOM. Interestingly the short effort was 1 second slower than previous, even though I put out an extra 35w?! Also medium was the same time as previous and I put out 10w more than previous, I did have a drop out this time in the middle of the effort so this may be why?
Not sure if I’d put the improvements solely down to ZA, I have been pushing harder in general to get out of the winter slump and fitness has been trending upwards over the last 2 months.
Nice work on the Finish Line ride. Sounds like our experiences were very similar. Well, except the extra 35w… I wish I had that in reserve 🙂
I’m doing badly on the drop outs. I’m refusing to buy an ethernet cable on principal that my brother works in that area and can get me one for free, so until that materialises I’m putting up with having USB dongles interfering with each other all over the shop. The busier the ride, the more I drop – however Zwift seems pretty decent about it and is fairly forgiving.
I can’t imagine the improvements could be solely put down to ZA. The workouts were just not taxing enough in my none scientific opinion.
But whatever it was, nice one 👍
Any recommendations on another event series to get stuck into ?
I suffered from terrible drops outs for a while, largely sorted now, unless I’m doing a finishline ride of course!
This is pretty useful guide and I’ve eliminated most dropouts by following their recommendations.
https://support.zwift.com/en_us/ble-and-ant-interference-troubleshooting-tips-ryUhOTnzH
Not actually sure about any major events coming up. It’s heading towards northern hemisphere winter, so expect more events to be coming soon.
I’ve noticed recently, my commute rides provide more “training effect” than even the ZA workouts gave me, especially with anaerobic. I think WFH more this year has led to fitness decrease. I’ll definitely try to hit the office 1-2 times a week going forward.
I guess if you could visually see the amount of signals in my room it would look like this:
I’ve got a USB dongle for bluetooth, ant+, wifi, and keyboard.
Most noticeably recently I got some ‘free’ Google Pixel buds with my phone, and when I connected them to the PC the audio chopped out every few seconds. At first I thought it was the buds themselves that were faulty. But I used them away from the PC and they’ve been fine. Turns out it’s because the bluetooth dongle was next to the wifi dongle, and I guess they are cheap and unshielded.
I’ve re-arranged all the dongles to stop as much interference as possible but the best solution I can think of would be to switch to a cable rather than wifi. We shall see.
Hopefully the powers that be don’t see your comment about WFH and fitness levels decreasing. It feels like they are searching for any excuse whatsoever to get people back in the offices over here.
Jinxed myself…. 3 drop outs on Coco pace partner today. Just catch up, drop out, catch up again, drop out… bloody hard work catching that bunch, trainer almost went into the TV…
Your fitness must be sky high if you could throw your trainer at a TV… mine weighs about 10 stone… definitely pop the back out lifting that bad boy.