For this week’s hard climb I took on Tacx Software’s Etape du Tour 2018 – Col des Glieres route.
The way this is described by Tacx is as follows:
A tough new climb will feature in stage 10 of the 2018 Tour de France & part of the Etape du Tour. This climb is one of the steepest ever used in the French Alps in the Tour & features & few kilometers of rolling gravel roads at the top on the Plateau des Glières. The ride starts with a easy warm up of about 4km. The ride ends at the monument national de la resistance which remembers the French that fought against the Germans during the occupation. The fairly flat plateau at the top was used to bring in supply’s from the British.
Tacx Software – Col des Glieres overview
The way I’d describe it would be: A bit like Zwift’s Giro d’Italia TT course, except replace the climb at that with the Epic KOM reverse, and twice as steep.
In short: fun times.
One thing I quite like about the Tacx Software is the ability to add past rides by other users of the software to have as opponents.
You don’t see these on the main video – just on the top right mini map, and on the bottom ride graph. But they are really useful, for me, at keeping me motivated and as some sort of guidance as to what I should be doing.
For this ride I added a bunch of riders, two of which were of a higher average power than I, and a few around or just below my level.
For this ride I had switched video capturing hardware from the Razer Ripsaw to the Elgato HD60.
I mention this as the last time I did a Tacx Software video ride everything came out pink. Not so this time.
However, it wasn’t perfect, either.
Still, at least the pictures are decent.
I’d done a short warm up on Zwift prior to this ride. The reason for this was simply to get the legs moving, and not to be dumped into the climb without getting the blood flowing.
I feel this worked well. I noticed of all the riders I had added, I was out in front during the early down hill section of this course. I had to reign myself back in to ensure I wasn’t about to go too hard, what with the length of ride ahead.
During this time I played with the left and right Heads Up Display (HUD) elements, finding out that by clicking the little spinner arrows, I could set the ride metrics to automatically swap between the various views every few seconds. This is really cool.
Some of the metrics on offer include things like averages over the last 30 seconds, total ride averages, opponents position in relation to my own, how many watts per kilo they are pushing, and so on.
All really useful and decent information.
There are some other views available which I haven’t yet explored. That said, I’m happy with the HUD. More than happy, honestly, I think it’s class.
From the last time I hit Tacx Software I was aware the ride graph at the bottom of the screen uses a red / yellow / green / blue system for gradient. The darker the colour, the steeper the gradient.
The fun of this ride was knowing that with the initial 5km or so being down hill, and the average gradient being 10.4%, we were in for a real swine of a climb.
Compare this to the Villard Notre Dame climb, which was basically all climb for the whole ride, and I knew this one would be steeper and harder. I think this is why I was a little nervous of getting into it, and also why I delayed (and delayed) my ride this morning. I started around 10am, whereas normally I’d aim to get on around 8am, and be done by 10am.
One thing that I should also note was I had a major fail with the Tacx Software again.
When buying the Tacx Neo 2, I got a little card in the box with a 30 day premium subscription code on it.
I’d been saving this code. Firstly I got a 10 day demo account, which I used during my first exploration of the software – when things were all pink.
Then this expired. And I waited till the new video capture card arrived before I figured I’d pop in the code this morning and start my 30 day premium subscription.
Alas, the code did not work.
And the tech support folk do not work Sundays. Or Saturdays. Or any other holidays.
This was super frustrating.
To get around this I ended up signing up with new credentials just to get another 10 day demo account. It’s annoying that therefore, this ride will not be logged under my main account. But that’s better than skipping this for yet another week.
Straight away, at the bottom of the climb I was already in the little ring.
My aim these days is to be in the little ring for anything above 7%, and I drop a gear for 8%, then another for 9%, and another for 10%.
Anything at 10% or over and I’m basically out of gears.
This can be … ahem, challenging. Mentally, and physically.
At this point it’s just about gritting my teeth and fighting through it.
There were a number of times on this ride when I wanted to quit.
Firstly, I was worried yesterday about my left knee feeling sore. Fortunately, that pain went away overnight.
But what came as a nice secondary was this horrendous sore throat.
I’m used to burning through a pack of tissues on these heavy climbs – it’s not pretty. But with the back of my throat grating from the off, and struggling to keep sipping water at higher wattages, I was under it from the off.
My plan was fairly simple:
I’d done some (very) basic maths in my head last night in bed. I was aiming to keep around 210w.
Anything around 210w would see me above my FTP, but only just, and that would be a good way to “pull myself up” – a thing I learned during the Zwift Academy 2019 sessions.
Another tactic I use on these rides is to aim for the half way point.
Knowing I’ve hit half way up the climb is nice and easy with the Tacx Software. The “distance to the top” count down is super useful, as is the ride ETA.
All of these things combine to give me a variety of reasons to keep pushing. Though, particularly during the second half of the first portion of the climb, and about half way through the second portion, I really just wanted to stop.
The only things keeping me going were my opponents, and not wanting to have to write that I’d failed on this blog.
Going into this ride I’d seen that at some point I’d be hitting an 18% gradient.
Fortunately this didn’t last for long, and getting through that section was mentally rewarding (things can only get easier from now on), but that part in particular was extremely difficult for me today.
I found a lot of the time I was dropping to around 180w, only to have to force myself back up to around 200w or so. It took a concerted effort to get back to 210w, and my cadence was averaging around 70. Hard work.
On the Villard Notre Dame climb I’d also had opponents on, and I’d managed to keep ahead of the ones that I was most likely to be competitive against.
Not so on this ride.
From my early start out front, I’d been soundly dropped by Mr. Orange (forgotten his name, sorry), and the dark green man was way ahead of me also. The main person I was racing against was Mr Purple Zoltan.
For a large part of the first climb I’d kept ahead of him. Slowly but surely, however, he crept up on me, swallowed me up, and then dropped me hard.
Fighting against Mr Zoltan was what kept me motivated during the second portion of this climb.
For the portions, by the way, I’m talking about every up to the first yellow segment (not flat, but it felt it), and then the second portion being anything after the yellow segment.
I was out of the saddle during the last stages of both of these segments. It felt refreshing to do this, but also I noticed I wasn’t putting out any more power than when I was in the saddle – mainly around 210w.
One thing that’s frustrating is that the Elgato HD60 did capture the pictures in nice colour, but the resulting video is janky as hell.
It’s effectively stop motion. As such I lost a bunch of this ride.
Watching back I also spotted things I didn’t see whilst actually on the ride. Such as the text above. Did not see that at all.
I really do like the visuals on these rides. Unlike the Villard Notre Dame ride there was a bunch more to see today.
People walking up and down the hill, cars all over the show, lots of houses, tractors even, and people resting on the side of the hill, watching the original cyclist with amused interest.
These videos are really well done, and in this particular instance, it even had real road feel. More on this shortly.
Unfortunately the video capture did not collect the moment I reached the top of the climb.
I’d managed to push down hard at this point, going perhaps a little overly exertive to try and beat Mr Zoltan, and also Mr. LEFEVRE who was quickly catching us both.
During this time I kinda went daft and blew up.
As I reached the top, I’m not entirely sure I came out ahead of them… it’s hard to use the video to find out, and I am not sure of any other way of telling.
What I do know is that Mr. Zoltan then dropped me hard as he shot off along the gravel track.
At the top of the climb there was still about 50m of climb left on the route.
As you can see from the right HUD, at the bottom – the pedal stroke analysis – the road feel here was brutal. A true gravel track.
Each pedal stroke sent violent ripples through the outer sides of my feet. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was difficult to get a nice pedal stroke going. Very cool, all the same.
During this time I heard some very odd noises coming from my bike. This distracted me somewhat, and I’m still unsure what they were. More investigation needed, but hopefully nothing serious.
Reaching the top felt decent.
There was a cool monument to the French resistance fighters right at the end. Well worth it – damn it that the video failed to capture this.
Still, it gives you a reason to try the climb for yourself 😉
All in all, a solid workout.
Like last time, the Tacx Cloud software failed to create me a ride graph. What I did notice is that this graph comes available a few hours / days later. So I’ll keep an eye out for that.
In the mean time, I need to get on to Tacx Support regarding my true account and get that voucher code thing sorted.
But now, I’m off out for some cakes and sandwiches. Tough life.
