After the PR on my FTP Test Ride back on December 16th, I ended up with new training zones, all of which felt harder. Since I am not doing the mini-challenge at the moment, I thought one good way to get the time under tension would be a 90-minute ride. I have not done many of these and they are far more mental than physical for me. The longest ride I have done lately has been the 60-minute endurance rides with my last 90-minute ride being on November 1st.
I did not really have any true goal going in other than spending time in the saddle getting used to the new zones. I figured I would hit some type of a PR with this only because my new zones are higher than the old. That alone would mean a PR on this compared to my all-time high (9/13/20 with a total output of 837kj and distance of 28.91 miles). This ended up being a 116kj PR.
Results
Power Zone Targets
Looking at my PZ graph, I was far more inefficient than I would like to be.
When I look at the black line output compared to the baseline in blue, I was far over in many areas. The positive is that I did not dip down into the lower zones nearly as much as I thought I did. For some reason, I felt like I had failed miserably at that. I also did not realize I spiked my output so much when I was supposed to be in zone 3 for the majority of the time (10/5/10/5/10/5/10 minute splits). I am terrible at holding steady output out of the saddle, no matter how hard I try.
Garmin
It is also interesting to see what Garmin had to say about my ride.
As I have continued to track activities, I have noticed that my VO2 Max has improved and my fitness age has gone down. As much as I hate to say it, one of the next rides I need to do are some of the higher intensity rides, like the Power Zone Max so that I can balance out the training. Those always just kill me!