The plan is working so far.
Looking at the remaining workouts I have to complete (3-6), I can do all the short workouts in the time remaining, along with the Finish Line ride, and be done by Sunday.
That will then mean doing the full workouts over the following weeks to make up the difference. Seems like a good plan to me.
So today’s ride was Workout #2: FTP Short Blocks.
That wasn’t really the case.
I found each block got harder. There wasn’t ever a time I didn’t think I could get through it. The 30 second breathers certainly helped, but it wasn’t much fun at the time.
I experienced a few connection drops / equipment issues on this one. What I believe is happening is that since I moved the Bluetooth dongle, I’m now getting interference with the Ant+ dongle. There’s simply not enough USB ports on the PC itself to effectively negate this. However, I have bought a network cable, so should be able to ditch the WiFi. Hopefully that solves some of the problems.
The other issue that I found today was minor, but not great. Last time I was big on Zwift my gripe was their obvious lack of QA. This manifest itself in several software bugs, which I’m grateful now seem to be resolved.
However, there were issues with the on-screen prompts today.
The final block was said to be 8 minutes when even my shonky mathematical abilities could add up 4 x 2.5 minutes = 10 minutes.
Hardly the worst thing in the world, but the prompts were also out of sync with the on-screen action – a first, as far as I have seen.
Why I think this is worse here than usual is that the Zwift Academy 2022 definitely has a kind of tutorial vibe about it. As though the bods at Zwift expected this to be many people’s first foray into their platform.
Having basic bugs like this seems poor. But even more so when it’s now been a month since the ZA2022 kicked off, and the workout prompts still haven’t been updated. With the 10,000’s of people who have been through the course I can’t imagine no one has flagged it with support.
Anyway, as far as workouts go this one wasn’t overly painful. I got my 30km in, hit my 600 calorie target (on the Garmin headunit anyway), and am not so dead that I can’t do more tomorrow.
The plan then is to hit two of the shorter workouts tomorrow. I think #3 and #4 are the shortest of the short two. That gets me to the point where I can then do shorter workouts #5 and #6 on Saturday, and the Finish Line ride on Sunday.
It might yet happen.
