Amazing. I managed to get a solid nights sleep last night. No waking up early. No waking up… at all. Just a good, uninterrupted sleep right through till the mid morning, which in my house means 8.20am.
That doesn’t mean I woke up fresh and ready to go, however. I was rudely awoken by my kids, and upon waking I wasn’t in the mood to do either of the rides I’d considered last night. This would have been either the race up the Alpe, or the Vatternrunden. There was another – a race on Innsbruck, but by the time I got to feeling up to it, the race was 10 mins away and I hadn’t had any warm up.
Instead I decided on Royal Pump Room 8, a looping circuit of Zwift’s Yorkshire map covering both sprints and KOMs in both directions.
Each lap features about 480m of climb, and given that I had ~900m left on my Everest / 50,000m challenge, I figured two laps ought to see me right.
It sounded fairly easy on paper.
I wasn’t really sure how to pace this one.
And I don’t think I did a particularly great job of pacing overall today.
On the various climbs I was ideally aiming for 3.1w/kg, but inevitably found myself higher – 230-250w, or 3.3w/kg to … well, higher.
I was happy with my climbing today, but each climb left me absolutely thrashed.
On the sprints I was less concerned. Sprinting really isn’t something I find a great amount of enjoyment in. I’ll give it a shot, but I’m never going to be challenging for the green jersey.
The most evil of the timed climbs today was definitely the KOM reverse. Man alive, the first attempt at this one totally caught me off guard. I was in the wrong gear, and I had built up no speed on the lead in. As soon as I hit the bottom, I was struggling.
Still, my strategy prevailed. Get into an easy gear, spin around 95rpm, try and maintain 3.1w/kg (or errr, greater), and see it through.
There are a couple of briefly brutal 22% climbs on Zwift. One is on Richmond Reverse, and another can be found on Yorkshire’s reverse loop.
Nothing stops a cyclist faster than a killer ascent, and it takes a bit of focus to get through these ones. What I tend to focus on, personally, is the rapidly increasing “drop” count, and again, that higher cadence / easier gear idea. Not often I hit 95rpm on something this steep, mind 😉
After 490m and 28km, the first lap was done. Route complete: Royal Pump Room 8.
OK.
All good.
I took a look at the Mission screen and saw I had 400m or so of climbing left.
Given that I’d just done 490m and wasn’t feeling too bad, and that yesterday was my one year Zwift Anniversary, I figured why not do another lap and hit the goal? It seemed like a fitting way to round off the year (well, by a day) and would be a good solid marker as to how far I’ve come.
The second lap was a total struggle. I was wet, tired, and uncomfortable. If it hadn’t been for that riding goal there is no way I would have stayed on after the hour was up today.
However, there were times during the second lap where I found a decent, steady rhythm and clocked up some good distance at a steady tempo. I was pleased with this. Even on tired legs I was still good enough in the legs. Again, solid progress from a year ago where 5km had nearly killed me.
The final 150m of climb were an absolute slog today.
Slow. Tired. Painful.
When I finally hit the 907m mark that pushed me to 50,000m climbed I was more than ready to get off the bike.
It should be stated that I’ve done more than 50,000m of climb by now. Just not all on Zwift, and not whilst I’ve had the challenge running. Whoops. The advice to set this as your initial challenge is a good one.
After all said and done, it felt good to get another 50km ride, and over a 1,000 calories burned in a single ride.
It feels like a while now since I’ve done a +1,000 calorie ride.
Hitting the 50,000m climbing goal also very briefly felt good.
I was surprised by this.
A flash of a blue banner, a new bike frame unlocked… and then… so what?
Maybe I was just feeling very, very tired, but the elation was very short lived.
I had a very quick look at the new bike. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting.
I thought the entire bike was luminous? Not just the wheels. Am I thinking of something else?
Right, anyway, last night I had fish and chips. I think I must have burned them off in this one.
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t particularly special. But I got there. A year and a day and I hit the biggest goal in Zwift (?). Happy with that.
I’ve already set my next goal – ride California.
But for now, I’m going for a cup of tea and a lie down.
