As we kick off week 1, we start with some easy spinning on the legs, Low Watts/High Cadence.
These types of sessions can be mentally challenging, my suggestion is to create a Zwift Meetup with friends and use this time not only to recover the body, but it’s also good to chat and work on your relationships.
Each Tuesday I lead a Social Ride on Zwift with different formats each week. Sometimes we ride for an hour, or like this week we have a more Endurance focus with a 90-minute 1.5-2.0w/kg session. We also like to attack the Climbs, and we hold a monthly social fun Race on the third Tuesday of each month. This week we accomplished 51kms within the 90-minute event, with my average just over 1.6w/kg. We saw a larger group this week, over 200 riders made this a great ride, and very enjoyable to lead.
We are honored to be partnered with Precision Hydration which gives riders the opportunity to win a Digital Gift Voucher just for being the closest rider to the Yellow Beacon at an allocated time during the event.
Wednesday this week we had a second Zone 1 Session with high spinning legs to loosen up before my Zwift Ramp Test. A great simple session for those days where you don’t need to take a full day off the bike. This is combined with stretching and foam roller.
This week Coach Pav also has me tracking my nutrition making sure I’m consuming the correct foods and
Macronutrient (Macros) balance to suit my training goals. As previously mentioned in my introduction, my goals of this program with Coach Pav are to lose some unwanted kilos, increase my riding Category and develop my Endurance ability.
Today marks my Zwift FTP Ramp Test, my previous test saw 255w putting me in a mid C grade Cat, with my current weight, a similar result would place me towards the bottom of C. I feel this session wasn’t prepared correctly on my part, perhaps we put too many efforts on Tuesday that had fatigued the legs. You can see in the late stages of the Ramp Test here https://youtu.be/YbGzw29ytxg my cadence totally drops to under 60rpm and I knew it was all I had for today.
It’s no secret on Zwift if you want to get faster, lose weight and increase your Functional Threshold. Easier said than done, but with the right Coach, direction, and support anything is possible, we just need commitment.
This months Ramp Test saw a total watts target of 360w resulting in an increased FTP of 270w, There are a few different ways you can test your Functional Threshold Power(FTP) other than a Ramp test, you can also try producing your best 20-Minute Effort and 95% of your average power will be your new FTP. Another alternative testing is an 8-Minute Assessment. After a good warmup, you attempt 2x 8-minute efforts at VO2max.
Your FTP from the 8-Minute Test by multiplying your average power of the two test intervals by .9. In other words, your FTP is 10% less than your average power of the two test intervals. -Trainerroad-
Friday
Rest Day filled with a cheat meal and some stretching and foam roller work.
Saturday’s during the colder months I tend to lead a Zwift ride in the evening, generally, the ride consists of 60-90mins of Zone 2, and we get a great bunch of riders to this event, and it’s a great time to catch up with friends. Fortunately, I have a great coach that incorporates my commitments into my training and gives me great advice ahead of this session to avoid any overtraining. This week we had a steady ride around the Watopia Figure 8 course, which consists of 2 short climbs and about 30kms for the total course. Coach let me have a little fun on the KOM Segments this week, unfortunately, we have some minor server issues on Zwift, which caused some difficulties getting into the event, Once in things were a bit scatted, so I just cruised, I attacked the sprint and managed to get the Green Jersey, all the big hitters must have been on a recovery session !!!!
The final workout for this week is a focus on Sprint Intervals. A simple session with the majority cruising in Zone 1 with 5x 10sec Maximum Sprint Efforts. CoachPav has set me the challenge to beat my max output watts each week and increase the overall average. How did I do?
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