Tonight’s Zwift Group Workout: The Kitchen Sink

TRI247 Workout Series #141 – The Kitchen Sink

Wednesday, 7th October 2020 – 7.00pm UK time on Zwift

(ZWIFT LINK >>> https://www.zwift.com/events/view/1104626)

Ok, so triathlon racing might limited currently, but that doesn’t have to stop all of your training, particularly cycling from the comfort of your own home / pain cave! Thanks to Zwift, you can self-isolate, train hard (or, as hard as you want), and get your fix of social interaction all in one, thanks to the TRI247 Workout Series!

If you are new to Zwift and are not sure how it all works, it’s well worth checking out these recent articles we’ve published to find out more:

• Getting started with Zwift Cycling
• Five ways to train on Zwift
• Using Zwift for iron-distance training: what do Pro athletes do?
• Zwift RUN: It’s not just cycling…!

The Kitchen Sink Session

I’ve called this session ‘The Kitchen Sink’, because it is made up by throwing a little bit of everything into the mix for the just over one hour workout. So, everything but the kitchen sink…

After a five minute progressive warm up, first up are some short/sharp 15 second sprints to just get the legs primed.

From there, a (hopefully..) modest start with a six minute threshold block, before a short rest and into two sets of ‘over/unders’, which you may well remember if you did the very first TRI247 Workout Series with Lucy Charles.

Following that, we have five, one-minute intervals at well above FTP (an element from the Lionel Sanders set!), before we then attempt to see if our steady-state triathlon legs have any speed in them, with a set of four high-intensity 15 second sprints.

From there, we finish off with five minutes of ‘Sweetspot’ work, before it is time to recover.

Join us at 7p.m. on Wednesday 7th October 2020 (UK time) on the virtual roads of Watopia. Set your reminder now on the link below or via the Zwift Companion app.

Tonight’s Ride Leader – Gary Craig (a.k.a. ‘Keen as Mustard’)

This week’s session has been set by TRI247 Editor, John Levison.

With John away, he’s called upon his good friend, club mate and regular TRI247 Wednesday night rider, Gary Craig, to lead the session tonight.

Gary is known as ‘Keen as Mustard’ at his club, Hillingdon Triathletes, such is his passion for all things Triathlon. He’s a regular at the Blenheim Palace Triathlon ‘Weekend Warrior’ event (back-to-back Sprint triathlons for two days), and completed IRONMAN Wales in 2018 and 2019. He would have been heading for Tenby again last month, but for the worldwide pandemic.

[TIP – It is always worth having the (free) Zwift Companion app to hand on your mobile device. Within the workout screen you can toggle your FTP by +/- 10% ‘on the fly’, which will immediately change your power targets during the session. Legs feeling heavy, can’t quite hold your power targets? It happens! Rather than can the session, how about moving your targets down 5% first, before giving up completely? Alas, the body isn’t a machine and can’t always deliver as you hope/think it should, so a bit of flexibility and not getting too obsessed with the numbers can be a good thing!

On the flipside, perhaps you are having a good day or increasing the overall training stress of the session better meets your own training goals for that day? In that case, you have the option of nudging your baseline up in the same way.]

The session is genuinely open to everyone of ALL abilities. Group workout mode works fantastically in Zwift and ensures that the power targets are tailored to YOUR level. It makes no difference if your FTP is 400 watts or 100 watts, the targets you see will be specific to you – all while being part of the on-screen group.

[To set your reminder, click here: https://www.zwift.com/events/view/1104626]

Joining Instructions:

The workout will begin promptly at 7.00pm UK time, Wednesday 7th October 2020. It is worth logging in 5 or 10 minutes before the session to make sure you are set up and ready to go, where you will be able to warm up in the virtual ‘holding pen’.

Look for the TRI247 Workout Series event in the list on the right of the screen once you have paired your sensors. Click to JOIN and you will be taken to the start line ready to begin the workout.

Make sure you have set your FTP level correctly before you join the workout as all the intervals are based on a percentage of FTP so it is important to get that right. If in doubt, dial the FTP number down 10 or 20 watts as it is better to finish the session than to feel like it is too challenging.

If you have never used Zwift before but don’t want to miss out, head to the Zwift support page for tips on how to get the most out of your setup.

After the session head over to the TRI247 Facebook page for some post ride chat.

Zwift Group Rides: TRI247 Workout Series

The cool thing about a group workout on Zwift is that varying levels of ability can ride together in a group and all finish the session together having done the same relative effort, even if the actual watts are significantly different. It is not a race, but a shared goal to get a good session in the training log.