Alright, alright, alright. It’s recap time.
Being that this Knighthood Quest was my third, I feel that a recap would be incomplete without first some history to set the stage. Because frankly, I wouldn’t be in this moment without a little backstory (tho I’m probably retelling you something you already know). So please indulge me a couple paragraphs of setup.
When I did my first knighthood in Nov 2020… In between videos 2 and 3 I had a problem with my HRM not reconnecting. I end up taking between 1-3 minutes too long to start up video 3. I was so concerned this would invalidate my attempt that I decided to tack on 2 bonus videos to the end to ensure I did 10 in a row with the correct rest intervals in between. Ultimately, this failed because in the middle of video 10 (Do As You’re Told) when the video disconnected and then the app crashed on my PC and my PC froze and rebooted and began to install a Windows update. 35 minutes and one Windows update later my KOS was attempt was over. I’d ridden 10.5 videos. I submitted the KOS form and crossed my fingers… GvA ultimately approved and I was knighted as Sir Evan!
In 2021 a number of new knights were completing their first quests and I had a sever case of FOMO. So as an homage to my first quest I did a second one that ended up being just a week off of a year after my first quest, and I rode a full 11 videos. All of which I had not done during my first quest.
So, of course, I immediately started planning a third. As luck would have it there were exactly 12 KOS qualified workouts left that I hadn’t done. And what would be better to top doing 11 than doing 12!
2022 started off poorly, however. After my successful 2nd KOS quest in Nov 2021 quest I tweaked my back trying to use our rowing machine. I had no problems with rowing in Apr - Jul. But I went into that quest a bit undertrained and either I was tight after my KOS effort or something else was off and my back went out. It took months for me to work out my back issues. And I was falling way behind on my 2022 fitness and goal mileage. Every attempt at increased intensity only set me back. I spent most of January to June with too little exercise or intensity and too much time off recovering.
After a long-planned family RV trip to see my parents and a month of recovery and low motivation I managed to find a groove with the onset of our company’s annual fitness challenge.
By the end of June beginning of July I had given up on most of the intensity. I started doing mostly long Zone 1 and Zone 2 rides to keep my lower back happy and build up my endurance, and put off the hard HIIT sessions as those MAP and hard FTP efforts seemed to be the biggest cause of my back problems. That seemed to be the magic bullet and I never missed a beat since July began. I reintroduced 1 or 2 HIIT workouts per week the end of August and yoga and strength work in October.
Despite the lower amount of intensity I’ve built up a ton of endurance and been feeling stronger than ever. And based on the HM I did in mid-Oct and the FF two weeks ago, I entered KOS 3 in the best form of my life.
The day after my FF I rode 5 test videos all at 80%. They were all doable, but by number 5 I was fatigued and decided I should not start off this KOS attempt at 80%. (But maybe that was just because I did FF the day before? 
) There’s a much longer backstory to this, but I’ll leave it at that for now.