An odd one, this time around.
Last week I did my usual Tuesday SST session on Zwift’s Innsbruckring route. It felt way more taxing than the previous week, where I’d used Watopia’s Flat Route (I believe, or maybe Volcano Flat, can’t remember).
My concern before today’s ride was that this one would be as equally taxing as last week.
Yet it felt ‘back to normal’.
My conclusion, currently, is that route matters.
What I mean by that is that Innsbruckring is a harder lap than either the Flat Route, or today’s very flat Tempus Fugit.
I have always been under the impression that route plays no bearing on a workout. If you do an SST on a hilly lap, you simply climb or descend at a fairly steady pace. The fact that the hill is there has no impact on your required effort.
But I think the minor gradient changes do somehow impact the workout calculations. Maybe it’s a bug. I don’t know. There’s really only one way to validate this, and that’s to repeat the Innsbruckring SST next week and see if the figures tally. Is it really harder?
I mean, the only other logical conclusion is in my physical setup. Could the Garmin head unit be manipulating things somehow? I honestly don’t know. It seems feasible.
Or maybe I was just absolutely thrashed last week. But that doesn’t sit well with me either.
So anyway, long story short no solid conclusion. Yet.
Do I really want to flog myself though finding out the facts? Can’t one of Zwift’s developers suffer instead? That sits better with me.
