Cycling Diary

• Rides this week: 4 (100 mins, 40k, 800m elevation)
• New actually verfied FTP: 208

Although my time / distance numbers are nothing special this week, I was pretty pleased with my efforts. I finally managed to complete the Emily’s Short Mix workout on Zwift. Its only a 30 minute workout, but it proved to be a real challenge for me. Cycling is a great sport for understanding the body as a machine, especially indoor cycling “smart trainer” cycling where you have access to all sorts of stats about your performance. What you find is that you build a capability to put out a certain amount of power over a certain amount of time. Keep your power output under your threshold and you feel comfortable and strong and like you can keep going for ever, but push beyond your threshold and very quickly you find yourself really struggling. You can see this in races like the Tour De France, where people push too hard and then “blow up” or “crack” and get dropped. Most of the hard workouts on Zwift try to get people past their threshold and see if they can hold on. In Emily’s Short Mix there are blocks of three intervals, staring just below your measured threshold, then on or just above, and then a fair way above. The first block is 3 mins below, 1 min on, 1 min above. Next block is 3,2,2 minutes, and then finally 3,3,3. That last inteval of 3 mins well above your threshold, after the fatigue from the previous work is really tough. I’ve failed to complete it twice, which made me realise my Zwift FTP must be too high for my current fitness, and sure enough after taking an FTP test this week it dropped 10 watts which was enough to make that last interval just about manageable. Now to keep pushing and try and build that FTP a bit higher, and maybe tackle some of the other tough Zwift workouts.

World Events

I think I need to take a break from world events. Its just too much. When an asteroid is spotted with a 2% chance of hitting Earth in 7 years is the lighter note of the news I think its time to take a break.