Here goes…my first blog for Voxwomen & the pressure is on to make it a good one. For those who don’t know me I’m Dani Rowe, I was Olympic Team Pursuit Champion at London 2012, I’m a 3 time world champion and I won a bronze medal for Wales at the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Image: Anton Vos
I’m not sure if I’m more nervous about this blog going down well or when I’m on the start line of a bike race. I was racking my brains on where to start but I’ve decided that there’s no better way to start my bloggers journey than to talk about how the sponsor of this blog… Zwift, is my go to tool for the most efficient training sessions I complete.
When you live in South Wales (although this year might be an exception) it rains… a lot! I don’t know about you but riding a bike in the rain is not enjoyable. I don’t feel very safe & for me I prefer to jump on the turbo in the warm/ dry where I know I can replicate a road session & more often than not train harder as a result.
Image: Anton Vos
I’m a huge believer in getting rid of junk miles in my training plan, every session I do is done for a reason so I tend to do a lot of short hard sessions which makes Zwift a perfect tool for me. You can simply ‘ride’ on Zwift, you can create specific sessions where you can input different intervals of different required powers to aid you with a session or… at pretty much any time of the day start a Zwift race which I can confirm are SAVAGE.
The newest advancement to Zwift is the introduction to courses of up and coming major races. So last week they launched the 2018 world road race championships final lap for all to enjoy… or not if you’re a sprinter! The lap is 24km and includes a 8km climb with an average gradient of around 6% with sections of over 10%. After riding a lap myself I can confirm there will be a very worthy winner this year.
I’m not yet selected for the world championships but if all goes to plan I’ll be on the start line come 29th September. Having this as my last goal of the season means I can really tailor my training around the specific demands of the race. Usually I would have to go out and such for sections of roads in Wales that replicate key parts of a race to train on. Having Zwift means I should get to that finish circuit in Innsbruck on race day knowing the course like the back of my hand without leaving my garage. Now that is cool ??.
Thanks for reading, my next race is the Ladies Tour of Norway after a successful Crescent Vårgårda, where my Waowdeals team mate Marianne Vos took a fantastic win . I will be writing for Voxwomen every month, so you can send me any ideas of things you want me to write about, or something you want to know about the life of a professional cyclist. In the mean time, why not look out for me and join me for a session on Zwift?!
Dani
