Over the holidays I had fun completing Zwift’s Camp Baseline.
“Uncover your strengths and train smarter in 2025. Over six weeks, challenge yourself with six rides—three workouts and three tests—tailored to transform your riding approach.”
The big incentive to actually finish Camp Baseline was the promise of a personalized assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Everyone who takes part and completes the camp gets an email report.
It wasn’t that detailed and it contained exactly zero surprises. I am not an all rounder, and I’m not that versatile. I have exactly one strength on the bike and it’s sprinting.
That’s been true for a very long time. I’ve won exactly one bike race in my life. It was a road race that concluded on a crit course. Crit courses are generally short and flat. I stuck with the front group to get to the crit course but once we were there, victory was mine. Whee!
An aside: I had to resist the thought that I was cheating. I felt like I won because I was a better sprinter than the people I was riding and racing with and somehow that didn’t seem fair. But cycling is like that. I had to remind myself. that other people are better climbers. If this race had ended on a hill, as many of them do, I would have come last, or near last.
I loved the sprint segments on the women’s coached training rides with Chris, in London. They were the best bit of the ride. I loved being able to power past some of the people I struggled to keep up with on the ride. Once or twice, I even powered past Chris but arguably he let me power past.
What’s my weakness? That was also no surprise. It’s endurance.
I struggled to even finish the endurance test in Camp Baseline. It’s 27.7 km (not too long) but it includes The Grade, 3.5 km with an average gradient of 8.6% just a few kms after the start. The Grade is an in game test of FTP (functional threshold power.) The Endurance test itself was based on your best 10 minute power.
I struggle with longer rides on Zwift because of the boredom of indoor riding. They recommended one of their Fondo training programs but, yawn. I would much rather do structured workouts, social group rides, or races. Really I would rather do anything on a bike than ride at a consistent low effort pace, alone, for hours on end. I would rather climb hills and that’s saying something.
In the spring and summer, I need to ride at least three times a week to build up my distance. When I’m riding regularly, I usually do a couple of fast-ish 40 km rides on weeknights. Then I go for a long ride on the weekend. But that level of commitment is hard to maintain with my big job and all the other summer things I like to do, like sailing, canoe camping, etc. It’s a struggle.
I have thought about aiming for a 200 km ride this summer. That would be my longest ride ever! I once rode 167 km. My bike club was setting out to ride an imperial century, so 100 miles or 160 km. We were so tired that we got lost on our way home into the city. That was in the days before smart bike computers with maps. We had to do the tried and trusted technique of asking for directions at a gas station.
That will tell you it’s been some years since I’ve ridden that far. My big bike rally days, which are more recent, are about 130 km. And part of me does think why does anyone need to ride further than that?
Anyway, still considering the big ride as a goal even though I know it’s not the big ride that’ll be hard. What’s hard is making the time to train so that it’s doable.
It’ll certainly help if we decide to do a leg of the bike rally and some of the days of Pedaling for Parkinsons.
Looking forward to riding lots in New Zealand in the coming months. Yes, I will work on my endurance but there might also be some sprinting involved. For sure there’ll be hills!
