There are plenty of rides where I set out with a plan, and shortly thereafter it goes right out of the window. Today sort of felt like that, as the plan was tempo, which for me is riding at 3w/kg. I wanted to do an hour of that, and ideally 30+ kilometres. Within 10 minutes I was feeling fully cooked. The weather today was pretty nice, which helped me through. Source ..read more

The idea today was to do the reverse of yesterday’s route. Only I misjudged the time requirements for this one – and ended up finding myself with about 40 minutes to do a 50 minute ride. Part of the problem was that I needed to be back home in time to be showered and ready for a 2pm meeting, and by the time I set off it was about 13:10. The other problem was the wind. Source ..read more

My lasting memory of today’s ride will be feeling like I was absolutely slogging myself, and then looking down and seeing I was going at 24kph. To say there was a headwind at times would be quite the understatement. Unfortunately it was one of those days where regardless of the direction of travel, it always seemed to be windy. And at one point, rainy. Which is pretty bad as the rain storms… Source ..read more

A week off on holiday, combined with a a fairly lacklustre Quarter 1 did not bode well for completing an SST session. Certainly not at 100% FTP (which I think I am quite a bit below now). But in traditional Chris fashion, I over estimated my abilities – a bit like my previous run – and whilst I was not so rash as to think I could get through a 100% effort, I found that 97% Source ..read more

Much like my cycling form, my running ability – which was not good to begin with – has clearly suffered from recent problems. That didn’t stop me from thinking I’d throw out a casual 6km run without any issues. In hindsight, a silly idea given where I’m at physically right now. Anyway, I started off – after remembering that I need to do stretching before running – with a 3 minute… Source ..read more

At the end of each quarter since the start of 2023 I have reviewed and reflect on my previous three months on the bike. This allows me to see how my fitness and ability is progressing on a wider timescale than week to week. For previous quarterly reviews please click here. However, because I started doing these only in 2023, it only just dawned on me that by making my Quarter 4 review also… Source ..read more

As the post title says, today I was time crunched. I knew I had a meeting at 13:30, and was planning on being out from 12:15 to 13:15, looking to do a pretty full on session. However, at about midday my wife reminded me she had an appointment at 13:10, so I would need to be back before then. Well, that cut into the amount of time I had to ride – taking me down to about 45 minutes at most. Source ..read more

Sunday morning rides used to be a thing. And when I did them I would always reward myself by taking it super easy. No pressure, no targets, just ride for enjoyment. And that’s pretty much what I did today. It’s actually pretty hard to do much else with the route I took because there’s so much stop / starting. One thing that caught me out today was the tailwind. On my “out leg” I was… Source ..read more

Frustration is the word of the … well, I don’t want to say Day, because it’s far beyond that. I’d say it’s overall been a very frustrating Quarter. I know I’m due my FTP test for Quarter 1 this weekend, but I also know there’s very little point as I don’t think the numbers would tell me what I don’t already know, and besides which, I’m really struggling to do sustained efforts without… Source ..read more

I’ve sadly missed out on all of The Zwift Big Spin rides so far due to illness and what have you. Today’s ride was only by sheer luck. Most of the time, if you miss a Zwift event start time, it’s tough luck. However, even with about 10 minutes of the event already gone today (I think), I was still able to join. I was expecting / hoping to be dumped at the start line. But instead it did… Source ..read more