It’s taken me 44 days since buying my bike to go from doing bugger all per week, to having ridden 50k in a single ride. Not all of those days have been riding days. In that time I’ve had 8 rest days. That’s couch to 50km in 36 riding days.
Last night I was looking for the right ride for my first 50k. I wanted something mostly flat, but with one hill. The other day, Zwift released an expansion to Watopia called Jet To The Desert. This is a whole new section of mostly flat terrain. They have also added a bunch of new routes, one of which is Out And Back Again.
42km seemed perfect for me, I’d do the full circuit and then finish on the flats (ideal) for the last 8km.
The route description is somewhat misleading. I expected only one climb – the Volcano – but ended up doing two:
- The Volcano
- The Hilly KOM (I think)
More on these later.
For this ride I used my laptop, rather than my iPad. Graphically, the laptop was better – not hugely so, but noticeably so all the same. The scenery along the way looked great. I’d love to Zwift on my gaming PC, I bet it looks awesome.
Rolling Round Fuego Flats
My ride started on an existing part of Watopia – sadly I don’t know the name – but veered off fairly quickly onto a boardwalk with a 2% gradient. I whacked up the gradient simulation to max in the Zwift App options. This felt harder than on the iPad. I need to check my settings on there. I wasn’t feeling too grand about going up the Volcano on this perceived difficulty.
Before I knew what was happening, Zwift dropped a sprint on me. I wasn’t feeling thoroughly warmed up but gave it my best effort. This being a 0.5km / 500m sprint I couldn’t realistically sprint the whole way. I just gave as best I could and put in my first time. I wondered how I’d fare on the second lap after having done about 45km more.
The scenery on the Macbook was noticably better in parts than on the iPad. This is partly due to it simply being a bigger screen, and I guess, the MBP having a better graphics card than the iPad. I really would like to go 4k, but I don’t have a TV that would support it anyway.
For the first 10km / 20 minutes I tried my best to keep at or above my guesstimated FTP of 156w. I had doubts I could keep this figure up for the full hour, and honestly, wasn’t even trying to on this ride.
Before I knew it, I had done 10km and passed the UFO on the roundabout (as you do?) and was leaving the desert lands of Fuego Flats. It’s a cool expansion, and even at 8am on a Bank Holiday Sunday morning it was busy. Cool.
Oh, during this ride I also took the time to upgrade my Zwift Companion app. The new minimap seems sharper? Not sure what version I was on, or what version I am now on. But here we go:
There’s a nice descent out of the Fuego Flats and down under the sea. This looked much better on the laptop than on the iPad.
Climbing these turns is always a bit of a grind. Doubling back on yourself, over and over, it’s killer. Fortunately these ones aren’t crazy steep. I love the two cyclists statues in the distance.
This route then dropped me down on to the cobbles of the Italian Villas, where upon the next Sprint awaits. This is one I’ve done before, so had times to race against. Also on the Macbook screen I could actually see the bottom of the top right minimap to give a better indication of where the start line would be.
I tried my best on this sprint. I’m not a sprinter. I never will be. But I try.
With the sprint done, and feeling suitably knackered, Zwift reminded me of exactly what lay ahead. The Volcano. And rather menacing looking on the laptop. Cool.
At this point I was questioning my life choices. Fortunately Zwift seemed to read my mind and gave me a lovely downhill section to rest and recover on before the inevitable.
What definitely stood out to me was how much different the entrance to the Volcano circuit looked on the laptop compared to the iPad. This was one of the most startling / noticeable sections for me, as I’ve done quite a lot of time on the Volcano. Inside the volcano there were heart waves / ripples, it looked very cool. None of that on the iPad.
Best Dr. Evil impersonations: MAG-MA 
Still enjoying the sights and sounds of The Volcano, I was a little caught off guard with the start of the Volcano KOM climb. And oh my, I felt it.
I’d taken it fairly easy in prep for the climb, but it still felt hard. Really hard. It felt like the first time I climbed Box Hill.
I used gears on this climb I’ve never used before. And it still felt rough. Eugh. At one point my youngest came in crying and I yelled at her. Feelsbadman.jpg. I did apologise after, but I still feel awful for it. I just couldn’t handle external distraction when I was that close to my limit. I was maxed.
Pushing for the final stretch, I felt like I hurt my left leg, and then my right thigh. What a fail. It wasn’t enough to stop me. I’m making it sound worse than it is. Or was.
Jesus H. Lovenkranz that was hard. But so satisfying. And the cruise down was awesome. The visuals were almost worth the pain. I even had time to muck around with the Zwift view points to get some nice arty shots. What a goon.
What happened next shocked me to my very core. And of course, I’m being overly dramatic. But good God wtf. Throwing another climb at me so quickly? Brutal.
I think, but am not sure, this is the start of the Watopia Hilly Climb. The unexpected second climb. If I’d done my homework, I likely would have determined the total elevation for Out And Back Again could not compute with just the Volcano. But whatever.
I couldn’t find it in myself to properly attempt this. I was still recovering from the Volcano climb. I figured I’d just do my best at roughly my FTP, and in a very easy gear.
Mercifully it leveled out at the end to just 2%. I wanted it over with. My time was truly nothing special, even by my standards. But I did it.
Thankfully this was “rewarded” with a decent downhill stretch to pootle along, and pootle I indeed did.
At this point I’d done 40km, give or take, and the overall end goal was firmly in sight. Zwift led me back to Fuego Flats at this point to finish up my 42km Out And Back Again circuit.
I knew I’d have the Fuego Flats sprint coming up again soon, so paced myself somewhat, but wasn’t massively bothered how well I’d do. All this ride was about was endurance and distance, not ability to sprint after a long ride.
Somehow, and I am honestly not sure how, I managed to beat my previous time. I guess there is something to being warmed up. Fairly happy with that, but again, sprinting was not my goal here.
I took another long-ish recovery after that sprint. I can’t say exactly how long, a few minutes / few KMs, I don’t remember. As the 50km number came ever closer, I decided I’d do some 10 second max efforts, a bit like what I’d done in the Tour of Watopia Stage 3 intervals section
I did this for two reasons:
- Seeing if I had anything left – apparently I did
- To kill the remaining distance as quickly as possible
I even managed to sprint over the 50km mark. Happy with that. Happy all round to be honest. It was a great ride.
I carried on for about 5 more minutes at this point, slowly spinning my legs down. Nothing to show here really. As mentioned earlier, leaving Fuego Flats involves a gentle descent, so I went with it until we go back to a 0% gradient.
Really pleased to have put out my max 1 minute and 5 minute efforts in this ride. Well, either that or equaled previous statistics. My overall heart rate was much improved as well. Not near cardiac arrest, so that’s nice.
Probably my favourite thing to happen in the whole ride was seeing the Zwift TSS Guy give it a full on EPIC grimace.
Yeah, that face is pretty much how I felt climbing that Volcano.
Probably the most worrying thing, aside from how my legs will feel tomorrow, was in ending the ride on the Macbook. I didn’t want it to crash and lose my stats. I would have been gutted. Fortunately, it didn’t.
3 Pizza slices translates to 848 calories. That is mega for me. A real achievement.
One thing I didn’t notice until I checked Training Peaks was that for this week, riding 5 days, I have done exactly 100 miles. Kilometers are nice, but I understand miles. 100 miles in a week for me is mega.
It really depends on how my legs feel tomorrow as to whether I will ride or not. One thing’s for sure, it will be a shorter ride if I do. No need to kill myself.
I may do another 50km next weekend. It took me about 1 hour 50 mins all in, so call it two hours. It’s a great way to start a weekend morning.
Having managed to ride 50km in 7 weeks, when I remember back to my very first ride where I couldn’t manage much more than 10 minutes effort is hugely motivating for me. Who knows where I will be in another 8 weeks?