Innsbruck is quite possibly my favourite map on Zwift. It’s got a decent flat route (with a leg snapper) for laps with a kick, and it’s got two solid climbs if that’s your bag. What I like about both climbs is that they are almost exclusively upwards. Sounds bonkers, but several of Zwift’s climbs have little descending bits thrown in, which drive me nuts. I like to settle in and find a rhythm.
Whilst I’ve done both the Innsbruck forward and reverse KOMs, I don’t believe I have ever done the Achterbahn route. And spoiler alert, I still haven’t. Well, not completely.
The Achterbahn covers the entire map in both directions. Both climbs, both sprints. It’s ~50km with ~900m of climb in the mix. A decent ride.
The route starts with a small warm up, then onto the Reverse KOM before taking the “down town” area in reverse, then up the Forward KOM and, I assume, a loop of the “down town” area in the forward direction.
I say this as I had to stop after the second descent. So with ~7km or so left on the lap, I had to call time today due to other commitments. A bit annoying not to get the badge, not to tick off the route, but I’d honestly rather go and see my nana than get another 20 minutes on the bike.
Anyway, my plan going into this was to hit both climbs at 235w, whatever that works out at in terms of watts per kilo I cannot tell you. I’m 67kg, you’re free to work it out.
On the first climb I blew that out of the water. I was enough above that figure to make myself question if I could sustain it the whole way up… and no, I kinda tailed off towards the top. Worse, I was out of the saddle to reach the finish line, and on the descent I felt such a pain in my ribs I could have sworn I’d pulled a stomach muscle.
Thankfully I think it was just a bad cramp.
After that I decided I’d take it easy, see how I felt on the reverse of the leg snapper, and if I was hurting then it was probably time to call it a day. However, by the time I got around, having taken it super easy for 10-15 minutes, I was feeling alright enough to continue.
On the second climb I feel I paced it better. That’s not to say I set a blistering time, but considering I’d already done 400m I was happy enough with my effort.
And that about sums up this one. Not a brilliant performance, but given I’ve just had a week off the bike (and a week of solid over indulgence) I semi punished myself and feel it was hard work well earned.
I’m in two minds what to do tomorrow. Should I stick to the flats, just get in some solid bike time but not go crazy. Or should I take another shot at this one and finish the route badge?
The alternative to this is to install RGT Cycling and give that a spin. The problem I have is that my internet is playing silly beggars (and right on queue it just kicked me offline as I was writing this sentence), so installing might take hours. It took me over 25 minutes to apply the “2 minute” patch from Zwift just to ride today. No idea what’s causing that as in game I was fine, and my upload speed is completely unaffected. Just my download speed is garbage. Very odd.
After a week off I expected to feel tired after this one, and I definitely do. I found it hard to settle in today and maybe jumping right into a climb wasn’t smart. That cramp kinda reinforces that theory. But hey, I enjoyed it. And it was a much needed hard effort.
