-[?] put on my wheel.
[?] pair of heels to follow.
Bad news,
I've been dropped.
Simon: It's Episode 2 of the Four Weeks of Fitness Challenge
Where to Stay Happy and Healthy in Social Isolation.
I've set myself a goal of getting fitter and faster on the bike,
and you are invited too.
The target is to improve my time of the Epic KLM on Zwift.
Now, as you can see,
I went pretty deep setting a benchmark.
[pants]
It's now that the work really begins.
It's week one of training.
[music]
-My race is over.
[bleep] [pants]
[music]
-It's the morning of my first training session
for Four Weeks of Fitness.
Actually, I'm going for a race.
I wasn't expecting to.
I was thinking I was just going to be doing a training session
as planned on Tuesday,
but I got a call a couple of days ago
saying did I want to join Mathieu van der Poel
and his Alpecin–Fenix team plus the Sevens with ProTeams
for the Ronde van Zwift.
It should be Tour de France today but obviously it's not.
I thought to myself,
"Well, that sounds ridiculously hard if not impossible so why not,"
basically.
I do have some team support though.
Conor Dunne is going to be lining up at the start with me as well.
I bag it in there.
[laughs] I can't tell you how nervous I am.
I think mainly just the hope that I can hang in there long enough
to call it a training session as opposed to just
five minutes of max-effort followed by riding around by myself.
Anyway, fingers crossed.
[music]
-It's only a short race today
so potentially at van der Poel speeds,
maybe only sort of 45 minutes or so,
potentially even less.
Anyway, I don't need to worry too much
in the way of fueling it with carbohydrates.
Water would more than suffice but
I'm taking the step to put some electrolytes in my water,
partly to help me rehydrate for the rest of the day,
so I'm on top form for playing the [?].
Also actually,
the kind of flavor and the sweetness I find really, really helpful
when you're starting to flag a little bit.
That kind of sweetness in your mouth really helps you dig a bit deeper.
Boom. Orange flavor.
Seriously, need to start my warm-up now.
Okay, it's time.
[music]
-Here we go.
On the start line, 15 minutes to go now,
just getting the legs working.
We are on the course for the Richmond World Championships
from a few years ago.
It's like a classic Zwift course. Actually, when you think about it,
it's quite similar to the Tour of Flanders.
The team liaison officer has been in touch this morning saying that
the guys are currently watching videos about how to use power-ups
on Zwift.
I can't help but think that they don't need to use power-ups.
It looks like in real life that van der Poel's
got a Zwift power-up most of the time
so dread to think what happens when he gets a turbo boost.
Anyway, right, just going to call Conor now.
Conor Dunne: Hey, Si. How's it going, mate?
Yes, morning, mate. I'm all right, thanks. Are you ready?
Are you in the pan? Conor: Yes. I'm in the pan.
-I'm on the starting line. -Let's talk tactics, okay?
We just one-two Mathieu van der Poel until he cracks?
Conor: We go in confident and we catch him on the hall.
You soften him up, [?] of that, you start putting the digs in.
-Have you raced van der Poel in real life as well?
Conor: Yes, I have.
-How did that go? Conor: He beat me.
Did he? Conor: [crosstalk].
-That's weird. Yes. We'll go with team tactics.
Hanging on the first lap
and then start to really turn the screw on lap two
and crack van der Poel, basically.
-[?]. Good luck. -Cheers, buddy. You too, mate.
-See you in a bit. -Yes. See you in a bit.
-I love that. Fighting talk. Come on. Come on.
[?] scores for morning, 66%.
That's pretty well recovered for me, I think.
There's no pressure on me. I think Conor's the one
who volunteered himself to win.
We're in the final countdown.
Okay, 30 seconds to go.
Communication with you could be patchy from now on.
I've got to concentrate.
Five and going to crank up the power now to one.
Here we go.
Boom.
[music]
-Okay. It's not super, super hard.
600 watts.
I'm holding my position.
[music]
Speeding along at a good 5k an hour now.
[pants]
Pace is settled.
It's Mathieu van der Poel.
It's actually [?],
not Alpecin-Fenix, guys,
but we're coming into the first climb.
I'm trying to just keep my position at the front
before we get to Libby Hill,
but keep surging just like a real race.
All right, come on.
[?].
Got van der Poel on my wheel.
I'm with Mathieu,
save for a pair of hills to follow.
Bad news,
I've been dropped.
Good news,
I'm with Mathieu van der Poel.
Lap two.
I'm in a good group with other Alpecin-Fenix guys
including van der Poel.
[pants]
Right, come on.
Got to dig in now.
It's daylight in not a good way.
I can't really see.
[pants]
The group's gone.
My race is over.
[bleep].
[pants]
Half a lap to go.
I've just been caught by a group.
I'd like to say it's the laughing group,
but we're going really fast.
Don't drop me, guys,
please don't drop me.
It's nice sitting in a group.
I won't attack, I promise.
Listen,
the only power-up I got is a burrito which won't do anything right now.
I might as well press it though.
Nearly at the top.
One last little effort.
Still average going at 21%.
Don't spring me.
[laughs]
[pants]
Fair play.
Thank you, Alpecin-Fenix,
Canyon, and Zwift for inviting me.
That was great fun, but what a kicking.
I wonder whether another barometer
of improvement over the next four weeks
is my ability to race on Zwift.
I'm needed now
to go and make Sunday morning pancakes.
Maybe I'll just have a little warm down first.
Jobs I need to do,
re-grease headset top cap to prevent saltwater corrosion,
and double-check that I haven't splashed
on the living room floor.
Monday morning and it's a rester today, thank goodness.
Check it out. That's what I'm whooping at this morning.
26%. Not ideal.
I did have to go pretty deep yesterday.
No, let's not beat around the bush. I took an absolute kicking yesterday.
Power numbers for the 40-minute duration were not bananas,
but I had to go so deep early on for 15, 20 minutes or so.
It was inevitable that I was going to get dropped
and then ride around by myself,
but it's cool. It was great fun
and definitely, definitely something else
to focus on over the next few weeks.
Today, as I say, well needed, well earned rest day.
Actually, can you say well earned
when you've only done one day's training? No,
a needed rest day.
Yes, that's right, well needed.
Morning. It's Tuesday, a little bit after 6:00.
Got up a bit early, so I can set my bike up
on the trainer before the morning rush starts.
Even though no one's going to get to work anymore
and no one's got to get to school anymore,
it still feels pretty hectic.
I thought I'd just take this opportunity
and then maybe grab a quick cup of coffee after this.
[music]
Okay,
let's go.
GCN Four-Week Challenge starting in four minutes.
Yes, cutting it a little bit fine.
Check it out though. 746 people joining?
That is awesome.
Basically, we've got three, 11-minute progressive climbs on here.
Now, I've actually made sure that my trainer is not on Erg mode,
so I'm going to be setting the pace,
but all my power zones and stuff,
my target's going to be displayed on-screen.
420 people on the start line.
This is so cool.
Here we go.
Boom. Happy workout everyone.
Look at all of the GCN dudes.
Yes.
Never trained with so many people before in my life.
[music]
-Start of the first interval.
As you can see,
groups are compacted.
Got to hold 280 watts for six minutes and at 85 rpm.
[music]
-Slight problem.
I just realized in the last-minute rush,
I've forgotten my water bottle,
so going to have to call for team support in a little bit.
Just about to step it up
for the last minute of the first interval session.
The first block, rather.
Feeling good today.
Here we go.
[music]
-I have to make a run for that water bottle,
so wish me luck.
[music]
-By now, I'll be impressed with that cyclocross remap.
Yes, we couldn't have a bike change.
I'm still there.
I'm still at the back of the group.
Next set,
it's going to hurt a little way.
Okay, here we go.
Boom.
[music]
-Have they ever been so psyched
for structured training session before?
Got the turbo set to their maximum gradient.
Here's the arch,
I can see it.
[pants]
Here we go.
[pants]
Just signing out of the workout.
That was super cool.
500 people joining me for an ATM ride.
Happy with that.
I feel pretty warm now,
and I've got four minutes
to turn up for our daily catch up
with all the GCN presenters
and all the filmmakers.
Also is a tantrum going on out there.
I might make my cooldown extend for a little bit longer.
-Yes, I've got it on mute. -[crosstalk]
-And also I've blocked my cameras so that people don't have to look at me.
-[?]. Okay, [?] a little bit [?]
-Sure, no one it know. -I won't do that.
-Love it. Right.
Bring on the day.
It is Wednesday morning.
Day off today.
Really glad, actually. Feeling pretty tired.
As well as getting a bit of extra recovery in today,
I also want to catch up with our coach, Kevin Poulton,
the man who's been setting all of our workouts.
It's that he's always good for some tips.
Now, two sessions underway,
quite want to get a bit of feedback, so see what he thinks.
See if he can see from the data just how much of a kicking I got on Sunday
[laughs].
-Hey, Kevin. Good to see you here, mate.
I'm to two events in, one race, one workout,
and I thought it'd be really cool to catch up
and maybe try and get a bit of feedback from you just to see
your first impressions.
-Yes, been really interesting so far.
It really shows the benefit of having structured training
mixed in with some racing and some free rides [?].
I did pick out a few key points from the workout setting,
and of interest to me,
your heart rate response to the different intensities
and different rpm from the efforts as well.
For example,
in the race that you did,
you're obviously going full gas quite deep,
and your rpm was about 100 rpm,
and your heart rate was around mid 170s.
That's your limit there,
but then, in our structured workout,
we were replicating the demands of a climb.
We had a set cadence of pedaling of between 70 and 85 rpm,
and the power was between 73 and 74, so are quite controlled,
but what I noticed was that,
even though the power was a bit lower,
with that high crank torque,
your heart rate was very similar to what you achieved in the race.
It was quite high as well.
What that shows me is that when we implement
this high-crank torque training,
we're going to get a good adaptation and a good response,
and we should get increased fitness from it.
-That's really cool. I see.
One of the key differences for me between those two things,
the workout and the race, was that the race
obviously went so hard from the gun,
and I went massively into red and then completely blue.
For most of it, I was probably just groveling around
whereas the structured workout was obviously tailored to my FTP,
and it meant that actually, because the workload built,
I felt really good at the end.
One thing I'm really looking forward to now is this free ride session.
I was wondering whether you could give me a little bit more
advice on how best to do this.
The guidelines you set are
I have 500 meters of elevation gain in a ride on Zwift.
Now, perhaps you've got a favorite route that you could recommend.
Maybe we could rack up some seriously good climbing.
-Yes, my thought was to approach it in small chunks.
A climb like volcano climb.
It's about six to eight minutes in length--
in duration, sorry.
That's about 5%.
You could do laps of volcano up to the top,
back down, lap around the bottom, back up the volcano again
and do that multiple times
just like intervals, like you would in the real world.
The gradient is not too much
but at the same time,
we're looking for your pedaling gear as well.
On mission, you're going to be pedaling at around 80, 85 rpm
on a 5% gradient with volcano climb.
We know you race at 100
but we know that you do our test climb at the end,
the Epic KLM, you're going to be around 80, 85 rpm.
It's important to train for that
as we saw from your work out there as well.
Your heart rate responds differently to that crank torque.
We need to train for that as well now.
The idea here is to get a big elevation gain in training,
looking for about 500 meters.
If we do that in smaller chunks on the volcano climb,
that'd be a nice way to start and see where we're at from there.
-Cool, all right. Great stuff. Thanks, Kevin for your time again.
I'll keep you posted on how things get on.
It'd be great to catch up with you again next week.
Awesome. I'm looking forward to the feedback.
Let's just tick off one day at a time and then one week at a time
and then get to the end goal.
-Nice, sir. All right, cheers. Thanks.
-Perfect, thank you.
-By the time that you're watching this,
I would've done my second structured workout.
Unless for some reason,
inexplicably, that's been an unmitigated disaster, then
I can safely say I've loved every minute of this week.
That's too much of a gamble, actually, saying that.
I hope you have too.
It's not too late to catch up.
Make sure you do that Epic KLM if you want to get on board
with our Four Weeks of Fitness Challenge.
Next week,
again, we've got structured workouts on Tuesday and Friday.
I'm doing mine again at 8:00 AM UK time
but also Oscar, Allen, Bjorn and Yuki here are also doing theirs
at different times on Tuesdays and Fridays,
if that fits.
I'll be doing my free ride over the weekend, which will be cool.
A bit of chill-out time,
if you call it that. Then the race.
Now, I was asking for some tips on what to do.
Daniel Pinto suggested the SZR series as that's Swedish Zwift Racing.
Apparently, super competitive. I'm going to be doing one of those,
all being well, on Wednesday. That's Wednesday the 15th of April
and it's 6:00 PM UK time.
Hopefully, I won't take quite so much of a kicking this time
but that might be wishful thinking really.
Anyway, make sure you keep in touch in the comments section down below.
Let us know how you're getting on
and I hope to see you out on the road.