How it began: I wrote yesterday about getting started again on Zwift after three months of casually riding outside. The summer included my birthday weekend 60 km, the Pedaling for Parkinson’s Ride, also a some car camping with bike rides (Awenda and Pinery), and a memorial ride for Jeff Otto, a significant member of the Friends for Life Bike Rally who died on the first day of this year’s ride to Montreal. I also pretty consistently rode to work and to physio but it was all pretty low key day-to-day riding.
So yesterday was my return to Zwift.
Here’s my smiling face, my big screen Zwift set-up, and my knees. (Check out how well the knee surgery scars have healed!)
How it went: Bah, I made it just 10 km at race pace! I was a bit disappointed but in thinking about I haven’t been aiming for speed in awhile. Also, it’s the start of the school year and I’m extra busy. Finally, I did have personal training the morning of the race. So that’s an hour of lifting weights at 7 in the morning and then a bike race at 730 at night. I have some work ahead of me getting back to bike fitness and speed. On the upside, my knees felt great.
Check out the red:
You can see it was hard. The red is high end power.
Zwift Power Zone Colors Explained
- Zone 1 (Grey, Recovery): below 60%
- Zone 2 (Blue, Endurance): 60-75%
- Zone 3 (Green, Tempo): 76-89%
- Zone 4 (Yellow, Threshold): 90-104%
- Zone 5 (Orange, VO2 Max): 105-118%
- Zone 6 (Red, Anaerobic): above 118%
It got me thinking about fall and the colour of leaves.
So it’s time for me to start on a Zwift training plan. Likely I’ll start with one of the FTP builder programs, which I’ll do along with the weekly ZRL races. Wish me luck!