I’m starting off in an unorthadox fashion for this write up, as the timeline graph is by far and away the most interesting thing about this ride.
Essentially this is 12 repeats of 30 seconds @ 410w, with decreasing rest periods between each interval.
Mercifully, the rest intervals are at 100w.
In a bid to cover some kilometers, I opted to ride this on the Greater London Flat Loop. As far as I can tell, I have never ridden this circuit before. I’ve seen most of it, but never continued on the flat part when hitting the bottom of Box Hill. Nice, that after many months of Zwifting, I’m still finding new bits of the map to see.
Right away after the warm up, I was dunked into the first 405w interval.
I didn’t feel too bad after this one. My legs weren’t fresh going into the ride, but they were far from thrashed.
That said, by the end of the 30 seconds I was more than ready for my rest. I think I did the first interval at something ridiculous like 120rpm. Trust me when I say, that did not last.
I chose The Wringer because it seemed so similar to “the baby version” I did yesterday.
It was definitely an interesting work out in the sense that I never felt bored. There was little time to think of much but the next interval. This was good, as the 45 minutes went by really quickly … well, most of it did. There was 6 minutes of pain.
Watching the heart rate graph in real time was interesting.
Between each interval I did my very best to calm myself, recover, grab a sip of water, wipe myself down with the towel, and prep for the next effort. Because everything was so short – and got shorter and shorter – I ended up finding the 4th through about the 8th intervals kinda blended in to one.
I do remember wheezing hard after each interval from about the 4th interval onwards. These were not easy.
The final two were out of the saddle as well. I wanted to get the whole ride through on the saddle but it just was not to be. I tried. And I’m happy to have completed it.
I’m a little disappointed in having not completed the full circuit on this one.
By the end of the structured workout I’d frankly had my fair share of Zwift for the day. This wasn’t a long ride, but it wasn’t an easy ride, either.
I’m also a little sad to see only ~40km on the board for the week so far.
I’m not sure I’ll get to ride tomorrow, as I have some real life duties to attend to after work. At most I might get 30 minutes, if I’m lucky.
Not too much to worry about here. I’m sure I’ll reach the 100km goal with 5 days still to go. In fact, I’d expect to do another 50km on Sunday this week.
I’m running low on time this evening, with still some more real life stuff left to do, so will have to cut this short here.
In summary, I’d say if you haven’t tried this workout yet then give it a shot. It’s a good one.
And to all those riding in the Zwift Academy 2019 semi finals this evening… good luck, that work out looks absolutely brutal.
I tried the wringer yesterday evening. My FTP must be slightly lower as my 30 second intervals are at 390 watts.
After the first four intervals I thought I would only manage 6. But by not keeping up the wattage in between I did complete all 12 intervals. However, at the end, I had to spend 20 minutes on the floor, so dizzy I couldn’t stand up, and feeling like I was gonna puke any moment! It made a ramp test feel positively friendly! My Wifes opinion is that I am ‘stupid’ to push myself so hard, and I think she might be right!
Congrats on getting through it Glenn!
That sounds a bit like I felt after my first FTP test. What I find is that these “bad” experiences tend to make me nervous of doing future workouts, and I get into a procrastinating state of mind, whereby I know I need to do something to break through, but don’t want to go through it again so keep putting it off.
Funny you say that about the Ramp test though – as that’s the next thing I have to do on Zwift ahead of the Academy, and as above, I’m currently very much finding excuses not to do it, as it sounds like it’s going to be hell. The things we do on a bike eh? Madness.