Hi all - I continue to enjoy Zwift but seem to be plateauing in any form of development. I’m not the lightest rider, around 83kg, and have been racing between categories C&D for a while. I’m 35 years old and fairly fit (probably not in cycling terms!)
My profile shows that I am a very active racer and love the buzz from this, but I am just not getting much better and if anything, realise I’m not very good at this despite working really hard which is demoralising. My profile on ZwiftPower is Daniel Newman if anyone has any chance to check it out.
Is it simply genetics, or are there other factors I can try to manipulate? i have done lots of longer rides and workouts but nothing seems to be improving. My resting heart rate has dropped significantly (54bpm on average now) but as soon as I cycle it almost immediately spikes and I’m always running at the higher HR in the race
Would anyone have any pointers from looking at my profile about obvious errors I am making or is it simply that my potential ability is limited
Thank you all so much for any help
You’re racing short events very frequently, and those events are going to put you at relatively high HR. I don’t know what else you’re doing, but that’s probably too much racing to achieve a good balance of low and high intensity workouts. If you race less and substitute more long rides focused on staying around zone 2 heart rate you’d probably progress faster. The thing about doing multi-hour zone 2 workouts is they can be rather dull compared to racing. I often do two 1 hour social rides back to back in order to get more volume of low intensity. If I start with a 30 minute free ride before the first social ride that gets me up to 2.5 hours. I’ve also been racing a little more than is optimal for my fitness but I don’t really care because I’m not striving to be my very best.
You are regularly crushing the D category events so you’re probably not being pushed to your absolute limits in those events. A likely result of this training program is that your easiest days are not easy enough, and your hardest days are not hard enough. One thing to try would be racing no more than 2 days a week, doing some longer zone 2 rides on some other days, and make one of those races in C category where you will be forced to work really hard and probably get dropped.
If you’re not sleeping enough or getting enough rest, that would also be important to work on.
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Thank you so much for such a comprehensive response - I always feel like I’m at my limit in those shorter races but will turn down the number of races and try to squeeze in some longer rides (life can get in the way of that!)
Thanks and best wishes