For this afternoon’s ride I opted for Barcelona City Trip, a Tacx video ride. Billed as an easy ride, this was about 19km of beach front with a couple of short hills thrown in to test the legs. Total climb for the ride was 124m.
Those two climbs look fairly steep, though the first climb being approx 100m, and the second about 30m or so, they appeared worse on the graph than they actually were.
Of all the rides I’ve done on Tacx so far, this was by far the busiest. By which I mean it was both jam packed full of pedestrians, other cyclists, goons on segways, and cars, all constantly getting in the way. But also there was a steady flow of other real world smart bike users out there, all hitting the map along with me.
Here’s what the Tacx blurb had to say about this one:
A light easy out & back ride along the seafront of Barcelona that takes in a couple of short hill segments near the Olympic park before returning along the coast to the start.
This is a ride to be done at an easy slow speed especially along the seafront sections where the film is recorded at a slow speed. This ride is ideal for recovery & those that just want something easy with plenty to see!
Tacx ride description – Barcelona – City Trip
I didn’t have a set objective for this ride. Essentially I knew I needed to do a stint on the bike, and I wasn’t in the mood for yet another Zwift FTP Builder session. But at the same time, I didn’t want to do anything too strenuous, given that I’d quite like to hit a proper climb tomorrow morning.
For what it’s worth, I think I did over do it somewhat on this one. Even though it was largely flat, I found myself averaging about 160-170w for a good chunk of this ride, which whilst I felt fine at, was perhaps a little too intense ahead of tomorrow, should I be climbing for an hour or so.
Unfortunately, as seems to be the case with alarming regularity on these Tacx video rides, I hit encoding problems with my video recording software so the available video cut out a lot of the things I had hoped to show from this ride.
There were some nice things to see, like some flashy boats and the a fore-mentioned segway enthusiasts. Also this old boy who kept over taking the video recorder at each set of traffic lights. But alas, this has all been lost in the stutter.
With about 3km to go before the first climb, I found I was probably pushing a little too hard. I had to forcibly pull myself back from averaging 200-210w to get closer to 160w. As ever, I found I was getting a little too excitable at the prospect of a hill.
One thing I’ve realised about myself is that I still dramatically over estimate my ability to climb even small hills, and regularly expect to blitz through them much faster than actually happens.
Maybe one day I’ll learn.
The first climb of the day would be Colina de Montjoic Palace. The only “measured” part of the climb was the yellow section, which at about 6% average was short, but sharp enough. The max slope on the section bit at 9%. Tasty.
The lead in to this climb was a fairly gradual uptick towards 3%, on a cycle lane in the middle of a busy city street. Being completely honest I was doing my best to catch Mr. Bruno riding ahead of me. Sadly, I never did manage it.
It would have been nice to get a few more screenshots of this climb. It wasn’t so bad, comparatively speaking.
I definitely went too hard for a day before a big climb. I know that. I knew it then, and I still know it now.
I practically raced up the first segment, only taking my foot off the gas when I’d smashed through the yellow block, giving myself some respite on the remaining green section of the climb.
Figuring I’d get some quick recovery on the descent, I should have enough momentum and legs to continue powering through the next climb.
One thing I really like about the Tacx software HUD is that it auto updates. As soon as you pass the climb, it tells you about the next climb. The distance away, the next max slope, the next average slope, and so on. It’s really useful and powerful data to have so readily available.
For the second climb, Colina de Passeig Miramar, I made a bit of a boob.
Certainly, I went too hard. I was out of the saddle – for the only time in the ride – in the small ring, trying to effectively sprint the yellow section.
I don’t think I actually made it all the way up out of the saddle. I remember questioning myself, thinking WTF am I doing here? Tomorrow is climb day! This was supposed to be an easy ride.
Thankfully it was short enough to not make too much of a mess of tomorrow’s legs. I hope.
Then I was onto a long, easy descent.
Unfortunately around this point my recording seems to have completely packed up. I’m still not entirely sure what’s causing this. It’s something to do with overloading the video encoder. I did turn the settings down before this ride. Potentially they didn’t save, or didn’t take effect without restarting the OBS software.
I’ll try again tomorrow to lower the settings further still, and maybe I could put in a second hard disk to record footage too. Although, at this point I think the limitation may be CPU? I have no idea, to be honest. Just guessing.
All that remained from this point on was a long, largely flat section. About 7m of climb in 5km. The ride finished up back on the beach, I think where we had started. Who knows, I’ve never been to Barcelona.
After all that, this was a typical free ride for me.
Cadence? All over the shop.
Power? Unconstrained and without purpose.
Heart rate? Well, higher than I’d have liked. But that’s a fairly useless metric with a ride like this.
Happy to get through 500 calories (according to Strava, 424.07 according to Tacx). When I got off the bike, I weighed myself. 10 stone 13lb. Finally cracked below 11 stone. Then I weighed myself just after tea tonight, back up to 11 stone 4lb. What the heck.
OK, let’s see what tomorrow brings.
