Prudential RideLondon Training With Dani Rowe: Week 8

About this Series

Welsh-born Dani Rowe is a former pro road cyclist and three-time world champion and Olympic gold medallist in the women’s team pursuit with Great Britain.

Each week she is sharing her story preparing for the 2019 Prudential RideLondon 100 using the “Prudential RideLondon 100” Zwift Training Plan. See her full list of stories, or learn more about Zwift’s Prudential RideLondon Training Plans

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Hello again :). Hope you’ve all had a great week. I’m now home from Mallorca after a fantastic time trying open water swimming for the first time. Also managed to fit 12 hours of riding in, which made me very happy!

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I looked at the sessions planned on the PRL Zwift plan before I left and managed to fit some of the structured efforts into my road riding whilst I was away. One of the sessions I found perfect for being out on the road was the power max session, which was essentially a free ride including five max sprints.

I am a massive advocate of quality over quantity, so whilst it would have been easy to get plenty of steady riding done in Mallorca, I was totally committed to structuring my week’s training. This is what Zwift is fantastic for–giving you the structure to ensure every session has quality built into it. Even just five max-effort sprints can transform a steady ride into a quality day’s training.

Sprints, when done properly (100% effort), really hurt. When you sprint, you engage your type 2 (fast twitch) muscle fibres, which most people neglect. Having responsive type 2 fibres engaged means you can produce a lot more power for those short sharp climbs, that sprint finish, and all those accelerations. It also means we can latch on to other riders a little easier.

Now that I’m back home in the UK, life is back to being super hectic–I have my best friend’s wedding, an extension being built on my house, plus plenty of coaching going on.

Being so busy, my next month’s training is primarily going to be on Zwift.

Just before writing this blog, I completed the shorter tempo 1 x 45-minute session which was 1 hour, 11 minutes total. As always, the beauty of riding on Zwift is that every minute is optimised. No stopping at traffic lights or freewheeling down hills! My body didn’t get any of the “micro rests” it would have had on the road. Additionally, this makes the effort much more like PRL. With closed roads throughout the event, there should be no reason to have to stop and get any rest. PRL for many will be full gas from start to finish!

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