Ooh, check it out, a shiny new red jersey (and matching gloves, models own) for completing one of the SRAM: Send It series races.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ride today.
As it happens I got an email from Zwift telling me something about a Ride London event taking place, so I figured it would be London today.
With a somewhat tedious day spent bug fixing and generally hacking around on bits of code, I decided that yes, I would – in fact – sit in front of a different computer, and do something (potentially) more productive.
I opted for London 8 route, taking in the Classique (in reverse I think), and everyone’s favourite: Box Hill.
Not feeling particularly fresh after yesterday’s race, perhaps today would have been better off as a rest day.
I gave my best effort of the whole ride on the sprint. I’m not sure if this is a new personal best. Unfortunately I don’t have my leader boards set up yet to track sprints.
After the sprint I decided to push on to the 10km mark, and then take a breather before hitting Box Hill.
This meant I got about 1.5km of recovery before the hill, and that probably wasn’t enough. I just didn’t have it in me today.
Fortunately, however, I didn’t know that until I got (almost) to the top.
Much like the last time I hit Box Hill, I aimed to stay out of the saddle for the first leg of the climb.
I did this. I got to the first corner, huffing and puffing, but only at about 230w average. It didn’t feel particularly slow, but as I soon found out, last time I must have been going considerably faster.
Rounding the first bend I was only just about keeping up with the runner. I think I saw more runners on the hill tonight than I have ever done whilst riding on Zwift.
The climb to the second corner was in the saddle, and at or around 190-200w. I remember feeling like I had a high cadence, but clearly that meant an easy gear which sapped my time.
I wasn’t really sure how well I was doing in comparison to my personal best until I reached just past corner three.
Then I got the bad news. I was way off.
This was mentally detrimental to the rest of the effort. I thought: what’s the point? And eased off.
Then I had a little out of the saddle moment, and again, I couldn’t keep it up. I just didn’t have the legs.
I’ve only realised whilst writing up this ride report that I haven’t yet added Box Hill to my leader boards. I could have sworn I had, but alas, no.
I don’t know where this time fits in, but I do know my personal best currently is 9:51.4.
So I was some way off today. Strangely it didn’t feel as slow as it ultimately was.
Tea was ready at this point, and I knew I still had about 10 minutes riding left to do.
The rest of the run was uneventful.
The descent was off-the-gas, the escalator climb was out of the saddle in a very easy gear, and then I tried to get out of the saddle again for the final kilometer up to 20km, but only managed about 500m or so.
I definitely think tomorrow will be a rest day, or a very easy ride if not.
I’m away on Sunday this week so hitting my 100km goal likely needs to be achieved by Friday night. Saturday is also a busy one.
Positives for this ride are:
- I got some exercise 🙂
- Taking 200m off the Tour De France Zwift 4km climbing goal
- 412 calories burned
Not much else though.
Zwift is saying that was a new PR for the sprint.
Ok, I will believe what I’m told.
Generally though, this was one of those rides that was the opposite of my other type of ride.
Normally if I feel like everything went to pot then it turns out I had a great performance.
And when things feel like went quite well, they turn out like this. A bit of a dudd.
I can’t really feel too down about this one. Yesterday’s race was hard. I need to keep to the exercise schedule and work on building towards a higher FTP. The problem with this is that the workouts are often 1+ hours, and like tonight, I don’t always have that amount of time available.
Excuses excuses.
