Welcome to instalment four of Project Best Winter Ever. I'm currently a few months into my first winter as a new dad and our daughter will turn one in the second half of January.
I've been documenting my winter as I go about balancing my cycling with being a dad first the first time. I aim to have my best winter ever on the bike despite the challenge by mixing things up, exploring the online world of Zwift whilst I'm time crunched and attempting to stay consistent.
If you haven't read any of the previous installments you can check them out below in instalments one, two and three.
It hasn't been completely plain sailing so far, and I can hear the cries of "no chance mate" and "might as well kiss the cycling goodbye" from certain parents out there. But I'm an optimist for the most part and see no reason why I can't balance the two. I should also state the obvious now and mention that my job also allows a good bit of riding at times, which I'm very lucky to have.
I had a blip a few weeks ago and discussed how things got a good bit harder. A serious lack of sleep kicked in due to the baby not sleeping well at all. I think we've been lucky with how the little one has slept for the most part so far, which possibly lulled me into a bit of a false sense of security. Throw in a bit of a knee injury which you can read about in part three, and the time needed for it to sort itself out and bike time was seriously diminished.
Luckily, it seems like things are on the up again now.
After laying off the bike for a few weeks and minimising my riding, my knee does now seem to be pain-free on the bike and walking about. I can feel some light pulling in the front of my kneecap still which I'm still working on, but I think I'm out of the woods.
As such, as mentioned last time, the time was right just before Christmas to lay down a bit of a marker and get a rough idea of my fitness and see what work needs to be done to improve my condition into the new year and the rest of the winter.
It was nice to get this benchmark, even though my preparation during the day wasn't amazing; not managing hydration or fuelling etc. However, because I'm a bit of a nerd, I did swap my waxed chain from my best bike onto the winter bike for a little morale boost.
I got stuck in, jumping onto the trainer in the window I had before we put the baby to bed. This is a job that I tend to do, so I had to get cracking.
There are two ramp tests to choose from in Zwift. The ramp test and a ramp test lite. The 'lite' starts at a lower power level and is capped. Zwift says it's suited to lighter riders or less experienced cyclists. I'm sceptical that ramp tests might not be as accurate as a longer twenty-minute test, but I'm not too concerned at the moment and for the time window I had, the regular ramp test was pretty convenient for me.
If you aren't familiar with the ramp test I'm willing to bet that as a cyclist you have heard of one. It is a test to exhaustion looking at your best one-minute power and aerobic capacity. Your FTP score is then worked out from the test numbers. It's typically shorter than a full-blown FTP test, of which there are also two in Zwift, which I wasn't complaining about on the night I did it!
The test itself begins at 100 watts and as the name suggests ramps up the effort by 20 watts every minute. Being a little behind at the moment was noticeable as the effort began to bite and I could feel my system wasn't used to the effort. I made it up to the mid-300-watt mark and a 192bpm max heart rate and as expected my FTP at the end had dropped from my last test to about 255 watts. Onwards and upwards!
Happily, my dad also arrived at our house unannounced with a large cottage pie just after I'd finished the ramp test while my other half was doing bath time with the little one.
I'll admit that in my post-effort stupor, accepting said cottage pie and chatting away was a little bit difficult, though maybe I should just be thankful for a pie turning up at all and that it wasn't after a full twenty-minute test. I really would have been bad company then.
Why is going hard on an indoor trainer so incredibly hard? It is for me at least. This is something I ask myself fairly regularly and certainly every time I do a set of efforts or race.
There's something about just being locked into the bike on a stationary trainer that just seems to magnify the effort for me, with no sense of speed from the scenery flashing past. You can't even think 'god, I'm going quick here' no bike moving underneath you, no feedback from the tarmac or road surface. Just pure, unrelenting effort.
It probably doesn't help that I'm just not very suited and don't have much power for big, grunty efforts like this. It's great training, but man it's hard.
The prompts on the Zwift ramp test and various other workouts on the app about keeping your pedalling cadence smooth and staying seated are useful. And for me, it's true, staying on top of the gear and cadence is helpful for the increased effort levels of the ramp or FTP test or any kind of prolonged effort at all really.
Stay on top of that cadence and maintain it and you can get deeper into the effort, indoors or outdoors. This made my mind wander back to a paragraph in champion British time triallist Michael Hutchinson's book 'The Hour' that I've always liked regarding effort whilst I was on the trainer:
"I can set up a fast pace when I'm fresh, and it's easy. Then all it ever needs to keep it going is a little more, and a little more. Like a hot-air balloon: once you have it off the ground, it only needs enough energy to keep it there, a little at a time."
For heaven's sake, please don't think me hacking away on the trainer is in any way, shape, or form a comparison to the effort of an hour record attempt. I simply admire the sentiment in the same way any cyclist who has ever pushed themself can. Michael Hutchinson was also good enough to sign my copy at a cycling club dinner back in 2008. The image of effort still rings true with me all these years later.
I'm a big fan of listening to music when cycling, especially indoors, and I've got through a fair few hours of music whilst Zwifting over the last few months. What I like to listen to varies depending on what I'm doing or how I'm feeling, like all of us I suppose. I've created a 45-minute Zwift winter playlist on Spotify if you want to check out some of the tunes I like to ride to. This is mostly a bit of a rock / indie playlist and is pretty upbeat and might suit fast cadences or a workout. Hope you enjoy it!
For my last couple of sessions, I've also gone against conventional wisdom and worn a light, long-sleeve base layer to Zwift in. I think this probably only works in winter whilst I'm in the garage with the door open. However, I find a towel over my bars a bit annoying, especially when making an effort and the long sleeve base lets me just wipe my head with an arm and seems to deal with moisture a bit better and keep me feeling more comfortable as well. So there you have it, ditch the indoor-specific kit and raid your winter kit drawer!
Longer days and looking ahead
A lovely Christmas and the shortest day of the year are behind us now which means the days are slowly but surely getting longer, and lighter again. Which always makes me excited, especially as I get older it seems. Although light is often made of it, the New Year is often a time to increase training and ramp up the effort levels for cyclists everywhere and it always provides me with an injection of motivation.
When I wrote instalment one of the project's best winter ever a few months back I outlined a few objectives. One was to emerge from the winter with a decent fitness level and promising power numbers. Number two was staying stimulated by exploring Zwift and trying to explore what it has to offer alongside the Zwift Hub One trainer. Number three was to try new things both indoors and outdoors.
I haven't knocked all of these goals out of the park by the end of December. My fitness needs work, being sleep-deprived for a time put a decent dent in those aspirations, but it's 'okay' at the moment. I have gotten stuck into testing the Zwift Hub One as well as the app itself. I've ridden with my cycling clubmates, and done organised Zwift group rides. I've spun up Box Hill (virtually) with Michael Kwiatkowski, and joined the 'Team Italy' group ride which was excellent, organised, and well delivered with no burn-up at the start or halfway round. I also managed a few winter races at the local velodrome, which was also new for me and very convenient time-wise.
All things considered I'd say 'not too bad' in terms of the project thus far. Having your first child is for me a constant learning curve, and I'm slowly getting better at fitting in cycling - my passion - with my responsibilities as a dad.
There are however several months left of the winter and though this little series ends here, I'm only more motivated to keep trying new things, increasing my riding where and when I can and learning more about balancing cycling and life as a new dad.
Who knows, I may read this in years to come and smile after getting back from a Christmas bike ride with my daughter.
