In the past week I have completed the Zwift Academy Finish Line ride. I was very eager to see my results. To make sure I had accurate results I used to same exact set up for the event. Over the course of the 8 weeks ish, I did all of the 6 workouts, the baseline ride, and the recovery rides. I surprised myself on the base line ride, so I did not really expect huge gains. The results that I got in the end were very good, and I think that this is a very good way to see how much I improved over the course of the academy. I normally do not do structured training, so this was pretty different from my usual “training”. For both the base line and the finish line I did the standard test, not the advanced. Here are my results from the academy.
On Titans grove KOM I did not expect to really improve as I already set a PR on the Base Line ride, but it turns out the training paid off. I managed to shave 7 seconds off of my previous time, so 1:44 for the medium distance segment.
On the Volcano KOM I did not expect to improve at all, because I gave it my all on the Base Line, but I guess this is the benefit of doing structured training, rather than just riding and doing random things. I improved my 22 seconds, finishing at a time of 8:03 for the long distance segment on the finish line ride. I am very happy with this result.
For the short segment I was one of the first riders to do the base line ride, which was before Zwift had gotten rid of power ups for the base line and finish line rides, so I had an aero power up for the sprint. I was still able to improve on my sprint time by just 1 second, which is still a pretty good time considering I am not much of a sprinter. My finish line time for the short segment was 0:26.
Overall I saw great results with Zwift academy, and it kind of made me actually want to do structured training because of the gains that I saw. Overall I think that the whole base line and finish line concept is a great way to see if you improved over time.
6% faster on medium
4% faster on short
5% faster on long