This ride was probably a mistake.
Perhaps I could have ridden ~25km, but I should have gone on a flat. Tomorrow morning, 9am, I have Stage 6 of the Tour of Watopia, and honestly, I feel pretty rough after this one. A rest day would almost certainly have been a better idea.
It might have been a telling sign that it was dark and murky outside in the real world, and chucking it down on Zwift. But I’d made some tweaks (again) to my setup, and I wanted to test them out.
I couldn’t find a comfortable rhythm at all. Things were bothering me. Not good signs.
Darkness. Energy sapping darkness.
Fortunately, Zwift’s day / night cycle must be doing a 24 hour day in 1 hour, as it seems to go dark and come light all the time.
20 minutes in, done 10.8km. It’s been fairly flat going, and a few weeks back I would have been struggling to hit 10km in 20 minutes. Now I’m doing it frequently, so that’s all good.
My mistake on this ride was choosing too big of a climb. The distance was fine, but doing ~300m of climb the day before likely pushing myself on the Tour of Watopia Stage 6 event for 30km wasn’t my smartest move.
There is definitely an element of F.O.M.O about the Tour of Watopia.
I didn’t really think how hard that would be before choosing it. I was just keen to try Leith Hill for scenic reasons.
Foolishly I went too hard, too early. I set a pace I couldn’t keep and it killed my climb.
I figured I’d have a look on Google Maps later on, and follow the route up Leith Hill, and see how rich the people are that live on these hills. A lovely foresty area, so close to London? Millionaires row for sure.
I couldn’t work out why the KOM hadn’t started at the bottom of the climb. This totally caught me off guard. By the time I reached “the hard part” (and it was hard), I’d already caned half a tank of gas just getting there.
The timed KOM part was absolutely brutal. It took all my resolve to get to the top of that bugger. This is the only hill I have seen multiple riders do a turn around on the climb.
Even with a lack lustre time, just getting to the top is an achievement for me. My time was not world beating. Not even close.
On a different day, with fresher legs, and knowing what i now know about that climb, I reckon I could improve on that time considerably.
40th on the day.
The descent was alright, but my heart (and legs) weren’t truly in it.
I rode the 25km to do the circuit, not really for any other reason.
Power etc, all not my best.
But burning off 500 calories is all good. I’ll take it.
I’d like to say thank you to everyone who gave me a Ride On on this ride. I got more than usual, and I didn’t get to screenshot them all. But I do appreciate it.
Looking at this purely as exercise is probably the best spin I can put on it.
It was a fun route, and one I’d like to ride again. I think I’m a bit bored of the London map at the moment. I’ve probably over played it.
It’s really interesting to look at the efforts in a ride report, and think of how the Zwift Workout ERG mode would look for the similar ride.
Anyway, tour lies ahead. Hopefully I feel better after the event tomorrow.