Yesterday I said I wanted to do something a little more intensive today. I had planned to hit the Endurance Climb, but when I loaded up MyWhoosh this afternoon I found that wasn’t a map in the current available rotation. Actually I didn’t even know that the Endurance Climb route was ever not on rotation, but there we go.
Instead I went for the Canyon Pass route, featuring mostly ‘flat’ terrain and then one whacking ~400m climb.
It looked ideal really, as it had a decent ~7km lead-in, then a hard effort, then as much flat stuff as I wanted / could fit in before my lunch break was done.
I opted to do this one on my gaming PC, so graphically I was expecting good things.
On this front I was a little let down. I think the Alula map is really poorly optimised, and at times I was seeing frame rates in the mid to high teens. That’s absolutely shocking for my PC, which runs modern top end games in 1440p at >100fps. In other words, it’s definitely a MyWhoosh problem.
What can I say then about the climb itself?
Well…
It can be absolutely savage at times.
I hit this one at 100% trainer realism, thinking I was in for a fairly steady 4-5% effort.
Nope.
At times this one cranks up to 15.1% – that was the highest I saw, and I saw that twice. And worse, I saw those gradients closer to the top than the bottom.
There are plenty of 14% sections to enjoy, too.
They don’t last long, but you will feel them whilst you’re on them.
Mostly I’d say the challenge on this climb is finding a rhythm.
There’s a lot of gear changing required, which I really struggled with.
Also I was out of the saddle several times when things got really steep.
Fortunately, however, there are several flat sections. Think of it more like a stair step than a full on climb.
Lastly today, as I was coming to the end of my available riding time I passed through the “green house”. I forget the real name for this section.
What I will say is I’ve seen this on MyWhoosh, and now seen it on MyWhoosh HD. The bit that stood out to me?
The windows.
Look on the screenshot above, and notice how the glass is coloured. That’s the sort of thing you do see on higher end games, and it did look very nice in game.
However, my frame rate was pretty steady around the 20fps marker in this section, and realistic there was nothing at all that I found should be taxing my PC that much during that section. Just poorly optimised graphics, because the newer MyWhoosh maps do not suffer from this. Shame.
Anyway, a taxing ride this one, but one I feel was worthwhile in continuing to push my fitness in the right direction.
I may opt for something touch easier tomorrow. Currently I feel utterly knackered.
