Crashed Out of Tour of Watopia: Stage 3

Sad times. I got up especially early this morning – 7.30am on a bank holiday Saturday #dedicated – and got onto the Tour of Watopia 2019 – Stage 3 (Group Workout Gone Wild!). Things started off great.

There was a fairly decent amount of people online for this ride – about 230 give or take – and unlike the previous two tour stages, we all stuck together as one (well, kinda two) big blobs due to rubber banding. So long as you keep pedaling, you cannot get dropped / left behind.

I was unsure how the iPad would handle this. With several hundred riders on screen at once, and knowing other Zwifters have had issues with this stage, I was wary that I too might experience problems. But things started pretty smoothly (except the frame rate, which was jerky but not unplayable).

It always seems like the minutes go faster when you don’t have to work so hard. And before I knew it, my 6 minute easy warm up was done and dusted. Then came the first batch of efforts.

I feel for the people who have crazy high FTP figures. The efforts I had to put in were hard enough. I don’t even want to know what these figures are for people with 250w / 300w + FTPs. Lots of people were moaning on group chat 🙂

It was interesting as each effort split the group up, and then once the post-effort cool down segment came up, we all balled back up again.

Even with the gaps in between, those minutes of 235w were enough to get my heart going. I’m really glad to be pacing myself, growing steadily, rather than having smashed out some 20 minute FTP score I can’t really maintain in the real world.

After the minute long bursts, we switched to 10 seconds of sprinting style efforts. My Tacx Neo 2 trainer has some issues around this, unless I’m misunderstanding what’s happening. When Zwift counts down a 10 second effort, the Neo 2 maybe lasts 12 seconds instead. Right at the start of the sprint, the intensity is still at the resistance we were just at, and right at the end, when Zwift says it’s done, it takes ~2 seconds to drop again. Seems really weird. Others were complaining of the same when using Tacx stuff. Glad it’s not just me. £1200 well spent 🙂

I didn’t get too many pictures of the sprint efforts, as I was, frankly, knackered.

After this block we got a 5 minute rest at 95w in my case. Nice and easy. Lots of chatter on between riders. It was fun. Whilst I was tired, I didn’t doubt I could complete the next 10 minute block. As ever, I tried to keep my cadence high whilst on recovery, but very little real effort going into the pedals.

Unfortunately, about 5 minutes into this block, Zwift crashed. There’s something incredibly frustrating about this. My legs wanted to move, but the iPad had killed Zwift and I was back on the icons / home screen. Total fail. Without stopping pedaling, I hoped by reloading the game, and rejoining I could – hopefully – resume where I’d left off.

Alas, no.

A few other riders joined and exited whilst I sat spinning at the start line. I’m guessing several others got booted out too.

What’s super weird about this is that it did upload my ride data to Strava. How?

Honestly, this is super frustrating. I get it. As a programmer myself, implementing a group ride for 300-ish people and keeping them all together, on all kinds of different hardware, with data being sent too and from so many machines… stuff goes wrong. But still, from an end user experience, this wasn’t great. It wouldn’t have been as bad if I could have rejoined. Hopefully future big group rides have made use of all the crash data and fixed whatever bug or bugs it is that causes this crash to desktop.

On the plus side, I’m really glad my ride data made it into Strava.

Sun Box Hill

Got The Bill theme tune in your head? Awesome.

Undeterred by Zwift crashing, I wanted to complete my workout as best I could. This, in my mind, meant doing another 5 minute block at 140ish watts, followed by a rest, followed by another 10 minutes at 140w, give or take.

I know I need to understand ERG mode, and figure out how to turn it on for free rides. That way I could get the exact effort in, rather than a rough guess.

As London was the alternative world, and feeling a little salty about Watopia, I opted for a jaunt up Box Hill.

There’s two interesting metrics on Box Hill. There’s the total time around the circuit (London Loop – 14.9km), and there’s the King Of Moutain (KOM) for the ~220m of climb.

My previous personal bests before this ride were:

  • 37m 4s for the London Loop circuit
  • 14m 48s for the Box Hill KOM

Having already been suitably warmed up on the failed TOW Stage 3, I didn’t need to fanny around. I could jump straight into 140w for the first 10 minutes. Yeah, I should have done 5 minutes, yeah, that’s free rides. Hard to be so clinical.

Before I knew it, I’d done my 10 minutes effort and wanted ~5 minutes recovery before hitting the climb. It didn’t quite work out that way, but it was close enough. I wanted to beat my previous KOM time, and was fairly confident I could do so. The bigger question I had was by how much. This might sound arrogant, but it’s not intended to be so. I feel like I’ve progressed a lot in the last few weeks so surely should be able to do better.

My plan for this climb was the replicate the Tour of Watopia Stage 3 approach – short bursts of big efforts, followed by recoveries. For each effort I’d drop my gear, stand up, and do my best for as long as possible. Initially I figured I’d try for 1 minute of hard push, before dropping for a minute of rest. In reality, it was more like 10-15 seconds of effort, followed by dying recovering for about 1.5 minutes.

Near the top, not likely to beat Bike-al Schuhmacher this time.

One of the cool things about Zwift is when you get near the finish line, the count down metrics tell you your ETA at current speed. I had a bit left in the tank so dropped to the lowest gear I could handle and went for the best time I could.

I love how it automatically swaps to a sporty camera view when you cross the KOM finish line. So cool.

Really happy with these figures, especially considering I’d done another ~25 min ride already.

Whoever designed Box Hill threw in a real troll moment as after the climb ends, and the feeling of success has just started to wane, there is another nasty climb before you can descend.

So long legs, you served me well.

After this, it’s largely down hill for a good long while. I’m not sure how long, maybe 1-2 minutes of zippy descent. Good fun, but hard to fully enjoy with the taxing my legs had taken.

Hard to appreciate the sights / landmarks on Zwift on the iPad, as it all looks a bit “minecraft” – but there is the Shard
(I think)

There is one last nasty bit of climb left on this route before you’re home. And that’s back up the subway. I think it’s a 14% gradient. Ooof.

Once up, the countdown begins for the start / finish line of the London Loop lap. I don’t remember a great deal about this, it was 100% grind by this point.

And finally, I was done.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a screenshot of my time against my previous records, but the data is all here all the same:

Happy enough with that result.

That was it for me for the day. My heart rate distribution looks weird today.

Fairly happy with the ride overall. Was not completely exhausted by the two rides in total, but definitely felt like I’d used my legs

Most happy with the efforts I put into the climb. I’d love to get to a point where I can climb the entire hill stood up, putting out a full effort. It’s a long term goal, and I’m very far away from it.

Again, don’t really understand how Zwift and Strava are so out on the stats.

No more riding today. Going to take on something a little different tomorrow. Hoping the Zwift support team give me an answer regarding the crash in the mean time.

Also, if you haven’t yet seen it, there’s a new expansion on Watopia – Fuego Flats. Explains how stage 5 is called Tempus Fugit.

Update: Zwift Support replied, and have credited my ride as complete. I will re-ride the workout myself for my own sake. Thanks, Zwift Support!

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