At just 16 minutes, Zwift’s Brisk Burn workout is definitely nailing the brisk part of the title.
But would it burn?
Well, looking at the workout schedule I was suspecting not. So far on these shorter workouts I’ve even managed to get away without a towel… just a headband has sufficed. However today I had a towel handy, and it was a good idea that I did.
This workout has a 2 minute warm up and a 50 second cool down. That leaves a very achievable 13 minutes and 10 seconds of activity.
Of that 8 minutes are in Zone 2, so really only 5 minutes of graft today.
On these short workouts there is always some change happening. No sooner have you settled in to one interval the next is upon you. Honestly, I find this a bit of a failing because ERG mode spool up and spool down comes into play. That can shave ~5 seconds off each block where the new resistance is defined.
But as I said last time, I don’t think these workouts are designed for the truly time crunched. I think they would be better marketed as beginner friendly workouts, or something. I know I would have definitely appreciated this sort of introduction to working out using Zwift back when I first started out.
As short as this workout is, I feel it would be best split into two parts.
There’s the 3 by 3s, and then there are three sprints.
The 3 by 3s are the less interesting of the two.
Essentially it’s:
- 88% FTP for 40s
- 92% FTP for 30s
- 96% FTP for 20s
Where the duration of the “on” interval shrinks as the intensity increases. Easier to see in a picture:
The second half of the workout is 3 x 10s sprints with 50 seconds of recovery between.
Now, by sprint I mean Zwift suggests 310w or 125% FTP.
So… not sprints. No. Anaerobic efforts.
But if you’re me, then sprints.
I only opted to sprint after the first effort left me frustrated. Wanting to do more, I spent the first 50 second recovery block trying, and only barely succeeding, in remembering how to switch off ERG mode during a workout.
Pro tip: it’s on the workout screen on the app.
After that I hit the second and third blocks as a max effort.
And so, yes, it was extremely sweaty.
Sprinting is definitely not my forte, but I did see today I got fairly close to truly breaking 1000w for over a second in game. The best I’ve ever come, as far as I am aware, is 995w… but the Garmin did report 1000w exactly, so who knows?
Anyway unsurprisingly today I wasn’t even close.
963w over 1s, 862w over 10s according to Garmin Connect.
Still, it was more fun than doing the 125% FTP efforts.
And that was that. Let’s hope I didn’t kill myself too much ahead of tomorrow’s race.
