For this afternoon’s ride I opted for the second workout in the Zwift Academy Tri 2020 series, this time focusing on my half distance power development, whatever the heck that means.
This workout looked, on the surface, really straightforward. I picked it as I didn’t want anything too strenuous ahead of a harder ride tomorrow morning, but still, wanted a decent hour’s ride without having to think about what I was doing too much. Let ERG do the thinking, and my legs do the work.
Starting with a gentle 10 minute warm up, I was thinking this was going to be pretty much a walk cycle in the park. And even after the end of the warm up 30 second on / 30 second off blocks I wasn’t overly concerned by the amount of effort ahead.
I’m not entirely sure if you are supposed to do these workouts as a combined exercise set.
By which I mean is there a cycling workout and then a running workout that you are supposed to do in the same day? An hour on the bike, an hour on the treadmill…
Because, it kinda feels like the bike portions are a bit… easy?
Maybe it’s just that I’m more used to doing the 40 minute efforts in the SST sessions, but to answer the prompt below: No, I was not getting a sweat on.
After the first block I was thinking this should be a fairly laid back ride.
Even so, I have been cocky / complacent on previous rides and been thoroughly caught off guard. Also with this being a Zwift Academy ride, there was plenty to read – and screenshot – during the workout, so it kept me from wandering into YouTube or whatever.
The first 8 minute effort was straightforward. I felt fine. Not much to report.
Things were looking a little harder – on paper – in the second block, but the off blocks were lower wattages so maybe things evened out?
My plan was fairly basic anyway, stick at – or close to – 95rpm, and ride it out.
And again, things went well enough. There was sweat by this point, but nothing untoward.
I could see a second block of yellow efforts ahead looming after these two back to back tempo efforts, so took a closer look:
I’m not sure if there was a bug or something here, but they looked no harder than what I’d just done?
Why is 2 minutes at 195w green in the preceding block, and then yellow for less time in this block? Kinda weird.
Mid-way through the first 1:30 @ 195w block I got frustrated and decided to heck with it, bump the difficulty to +10%.
After upping the difficult to +10%, things got noticeably more knackering.
Initially I’d only decided to bump the workout for this middle block or yellow / blue stuff. But after that was over, I figured why not keep it on and actually push myself for the remaining half of the ride?
Well, perhaps +10% was a little steep considering I am planning on doing a longer harder ride tomorrow.
Maybe.
But I kept it on, bumping the green block from 190w to 210w.
There was no doubt I was working harder at this point. Pretty steady at around 3w/kg, and even though the initial half of the workout had been easier, I’d still been working for ~20 minutes give or take by this point, so wasn’t fresh.
Heading into the final block I was more than ready to see the end of this workout.
What had started as an easy ride had definitely turned into a slog to the finish. I was feeling it for sure.
Still, no regrets really. It would seem I either prefer to be working hard, or taking it easy. I’m not a big fan of the middle ground.
I think I should also point out that at one point during the second effort, I really did want to quit. That’s pretty rare for me, but there was a brief moment today where I just wanted to stop and give up.
Fortunately I saw sense, if only to save my pride when writing this post. I don’t know how I’d get on if I didn’t have this blog to keep me accountable.
All in all, given the second half of the ride was more intense, I’m going to say this was a decent workout today.
I’m genuinely curious as to whether these rides are intentionally easier as you are supposed to conjoin them with a run in the same session?
Anyone know the answer?
Looking ahead to tomorrow, I have 900m left to climb (I think… it might be 1,100) to reach the 50,000m climbing goal and get the tron bike.
As far as I can see, the only real choice to hit 1,000m of climb in a fairly reasonable time is on Alpe du Zwift.
I might do that. I might do part of it as a workout – SST, maybe.
However, I kinda wanna do a free ride. And I kinda don’t want to do Alpe du Zwift again so soon. It’s not that I’m against climbing it, but I want a bit of variety, ya know?
There’s the Yorkshire map on rotation, and I think a race on Innsbruck featuring some more climbing. I’m as yet undecided.
