Friday afternoon Zwifting is a thing of great enjoyment to me.
Currently I am working towards the L’Etape Du Tour Mission, which involves climbing 4563m before 28th.
With that in mind, today I opted for Zwift’s Epic KOM and Radio Tower climbs, aiming to take ~600m off the remaining total.
I felt alright at the start of this one.
I didn’t ride yesterday so was feeling fresher than when I took on Box Hill on Tuesday.
Heading out towards the climb I aimed to take the first ~5km at a fairly easy pace, just building up gradually.
I did power up the short climb out of the under the sea tunnel.
That led to a bit of regret as the Epic KOM approach started very shortly afterwards. Whoops.
I definitely misjudged the first stage of the Epic KOM climb today.
Going above 200w for a good chunk of the first part of the climb – up to the castle. I felt alright at this stage, aiming to keep a fairly steady pace and cadence.
I managed to catch and pass a few riders, and was feeling pretty good about myself.
There was a bit of a reality check when I saw the first distance marker telling me ~8km still to go. And pretty much entirely up hill as well. Fun times.
One thing I forgot to do before taking on the Epic KOM today was check my previous time. As best I am aware, I have only done the Forward Epic KOM once before.
I know now that my previous best was a 36:13.94.
Or if you follow the Strava / Zwift Insider verified routes, my last / only Epic KOM time was a 36:15.
None of this really mattered on the first stage of the climb though. I genuinely thought I’d be able to maintain about 200w average up the hill.
Unfortunately, once I got to the castle I took my foot of the gas somewhat.
This bit being a short, flat respite, I dropped down to about 140w. When it came to getting back on the gas, I struggled.
Unfortunately that meant the second half of the climb was at a lower intensity. About 180w average.
I was a bit disappointed in myself at this point.
One of the riders I’d over taken on the first half caught me up, and subsequently passed – and dropped – me like a stone.
Gutted. But fair play to him.
I gave a couple of attempts at trying to catch J. Arciero back up, but neither was successful.
In the end he completely left me for dead.
I can’t say I found this one as hard as I did the first time around.
It also felt shorter.
I put this partly down to having done some other of the bigger climbs in Zwift by now, and partly because I knew what to expect this time. Better prepared, and all that.
When the time board popped up I was a bit gutted to see a time over 30 minutes in truth.
As mentioned, I wasn’t sure how I’d done last time, but figured it might be around 32 minutes.
To see a similar time on the board was a bit crushing.
Even so, I huffed, puffed, and heaved onwards to put in a 31:40.9.
Much better than last time, in hindsight. But still, lots of room for improvement.
As best I recall, the rider who took the jersey did it in ~22 minutes.
After the Epic KOM I continued on for more punishment up the Radio Tower.
Again, this wasn’t as bad as I remember it. It was still brutally hard, and whilst I’d managed the Epic KOM on the big ring, I was very much in granny gears for this phase of the climb.
Going so slowly, the short distance – 1.1km at 13.7% average – feels like vastly longer.
The tower pops into view, but seems to only crawl closer. At 6kph or whatever I averaged, I guess that is walking pace.
Unfortunately Zwift does not give a time for climbing the radio tower. My previous best was 09:20.
I need to pull down my latest data from Zwift and update my leaderboards so I can see how I did. Hopefully better.
Along the way I hit my 3 hour weekly riding goal.
Still ~12km from my 100km weekly riding goal. Hopefully get through that on Sunday. Not riding tomorrow as I’m out all day.
Once I hit the top I was pretty much done. All down hill from here. Quite literally.
The descent was taken largely in the hardest gear, but at a very leisurely pace.
There are a couple of short climbs on the descent, which on the second, I felt my left calf twitch painfully. Really should have used an easier gear. Silly me.
Down at the bottom it’s always fun to look back and think… yeah, I just did that.
It definitely feels like some kind of achievement to make it up and down the big hills.
On the way back I tried my absolute best on the bridge sprint.
My time was OK, but again, no idea what my all time personal best is as Zwift drops all this good stuff. So silly.
I don’t yet have the leader board info for the sprints either, so it’s a total guess as to how that truly fares overall.
One things for sure, it thrashed me hard and I really struggled up the short hill just after the sprint.
I pushed on as best I could towards the finish line. Hitting 30km felt good. An hour on the bike, also decent.
Overall this was a drippy affair. Lots of sweat. Lots of hard work.
A decent work out.
Cheers all for the ride on’s. They do help take my mind of the pain, momentarily.
I’m going to take a 700+ calorie work out any day of the week.
Ideally I’d keep up with the 12 week FTP Booster program I’m on. But this was probably a better workout, overall.
Overall at the moment I am not feeling strong on the bike. The performances haven’t been too bad though, so maybe it’s a mental thing?
