I was expecting to ride London this morning, but had clearly not done my Zwift World Map homework, as today’s map is Richmond. Now, previously I have stated my dislike for Richmond, but in fairness, I have never given it a proper chance.
What I really didn’t like about Richmond was the cobble sections. On the Tacx Neo 2 the cobbles vibrate through the bike something rotten. I was not a fan. However, using the Tacx Utility, you can adjust the intensity of any of the different road feels – so I knocked Cobbles down to 50%, and that was more than enough to make them noticeable, but not horrible.
Because there are only three routes available on Richmond, the chances are that each route is busy. And I can attest to this having ridden the flat road before – it’s usually packed. Now that’s saying something, as I tend to ride at 7.30am. I’d imagine later in the evenings it’s vastly busier.
I still find the scenery on Richmond to be amongst the most dull that Zwift has to offer. It’s very brutalist in places, full of rather boring looking square houses, grey concrete car parks, and under passes. In many ways it reminded me of Manchester. In this regard, the various road surface changes kept things more interesting than they otherwise might have been.
Having recently done some investigation into the various climbs and climbing difficulties available in all the Zwift maps, I knew that UCI Richmond World Circuit had two sprints and two climbs to tackle. It’s fairly difficult to see on the iPad, and I admit to not realising that the info was available to me all along by way of the minimap, but had I spotted it – the two sprints come first, and then the two climbs come second.
I couldn’t remember having taken part in either of the sprints, and I was 100% certain I hadn’t taken on either of the two climbs.
I messed up my prep for the first sprint. I went a little too hard, too soon. I didn’t realise the start line came after we’d made the u-turn. Not a huge mistake, admittedly, but a little frustrating all the same.
Even so, I gave this sprint my absolute all. I think I came close to 500w, but didn’t quite make it through that barrier. My time of 19.17 seconds was good enough for 46th out of 415 overall. Really happy with this. Though I was fairly knackered afterwards.
Behind the scenes I’m working on a little integration with the Strava API so I can see all my sprints and KOM’s going back to my very first ride. I love the Zwift leaderboards, but having only 30 days of stats is a bit meh.
What kept me motivated to keep pushing those pedals round was, as ever, my 10km in 20 minutes or under personal challenge. Having never ridden the Richmond UCI World’s Course before, I had no idea what lay ahead as a barrier to achieving this. As above, if I’d just looked at the mini map, I would have seen the climbs would come after 10km. Silly me.
It’s not just the architecture that espouses brutalism on Richmond, it’s also the distance between the two sprints. The gap is only about ~2km, and I had barely recovered before the next one was up on me.
The length of the two Richmond sprints are fairly even:
- Sprint 1: 0.22km
- Sprint 2: 0.28km
Both are flat / 0% gradients, to the very best of my knowledge. I think, actually, all the sprints are flat in Zwift. That’s not something I have paid full attention to, come to think of it. I’m guessing an uphill sprint would be super mean.
The second sprint was weird. I couldn’t seem to find resistance even in the lowest / hardest gearing. The best I remember seeing was around ~360w, and whilst yes, I was tired, I did feel I could have done better but for whatever reason, the harder I pushed, it didn’t seem to do much.
Again nothing to compare this one too, so not much else to say about this. I believe I can do better next time.
With the sprints out of the way, it was quite a long time before the start of the climbs, but as above, I didn’t trouble myself with the knowledge available via the minimap, so kept thinking … any second now. As such, I kinda held back a little bit too much I feel.
Around the 8km mark, there was a significant downhill segment which roughly took me to 10km, which meant I had a fairly easy ride in on my usual 10km in 20 minutes or under target.
After the long descent, I tried to keep with this small pack of riders for as long as possible, but was also aware that with ~10km done of a 16km circuit, and having only done 14m of climb in total so far, sooner or later we’d be heading up 100m or so of climb, and I knew that both climbs on Richmond are fairly short and steep.
All three riders in the small pack I was with promptly dropped me. Sigh.
Just after this underpass section, the road u-turn’s back on itself and Richmond’s Libby Hill KOM climbs kick in. This one was hard. I definitely mucked up my gearing, and am unfortunately still suffering from a really annoying phantom shift in the lower half of my cogs. No idea how to solve this. I keep trying, but it’s a persistence bugger of a problem.
Being able to see the finish arch on the minimap was the smallest of consolations on what was a really challenging ascent. I’d gone too hard initially, and was punished. I think sticking around my FTP on a climb is a really good shout. This means I should be climbing around 160-170w, which is never going to break any records, but it sets a realistic pace to chip away at the climb.
I wish I could say I settled into a good rhythm on this climb, but the truth is I totally messed it up. I’ve found there to be a lot of snobbery in cycling particularly when it comes to power and climbing, and maybe I’m comparing myself too harshly against some of the YouTube videos I’ve watched. I’m 8 weeks in, for God’s sake. This is pretty decent all things considered!
Mercifully the finish arch appeared. Weirdly Zwift opts to count this climb in seconds, not minutes and seconds. My time was not great. However, it was a new PR (as it was my first attempt) and a great bench mark for my next time on Libby Hill.
Again, kinda weird they show the time in seconds and the KOM chart / leaderboard in the more usual minutes and seconds. I didn’t much care about that during the ride, truth be told. I was too busy dripping and dying.
It was jolly decent of Zwift to throw in a short bit of down hill at this point. My legs. My poor, poor legs.
I could see I’d only done about half of the total climb for the ride. All in, I still had about the same left to do. Woe is me.
The respite was mercilessly short. With the Libby Hill KOM leaderboard still on screen, why not start the 12% monster of Richmond’s 23rd Street KOM? Hardcore.
This climb was a total unmitigated disaster. I had almost nothing left, and I’d screwed up my gearing completely.
The cadence graph from Strava gives it all away. The worst I saw was around 30rpm. Truly a slog, and nothing but ways to improve as a take away. Keeping a high cadence for a climb is much harder than it sounds, especially on killer gradients.
At one point on this climb I decided I couldn’t hack the big ring and needed the little ring at the front. Trying to change down, I couldn’t seem to get the shifter to work. I had to use my right hand to yank the lever, and it dropped. But it wasn’t happy. Not at all. It locked the chain completely, forcing me to come to a complete stand still. I have absolutely no idea what happened here, but clearly the bike didn’t like it.
As both climbs were so short, the finish arches were almost immediately visible. It doesn’t mean getting there was a breeze, by any means. Climbing and cobbles. What a joyful Friday morning combo.
No prizes were won on this climb. The top of the board put in a 28.45. Absolutely insane. Guessing that was just a pure hardcore sprint.
I was absolutely bushed by this point, as my 90 solid watts attest too.
Zwift did the decent thing and threw in a long friendly down hill glide back to the 2015 UCI World Course start finish line.
Nah, who am I kidding? Of course they didn’t. Another climb back to the finish line awaited.
This one wasn’t anything like as bad as the previous two, shorter with a plateau mid way up as best I recall. I felt better about this one than I had the previous, that’s for sure.
Running out of time, and wanting to get the circuit over with, I was trolled by the banners up ahead. I thought the start of those were the finish line. Almost, but not quite.
I gave it a good shot on this ride. It didn’t feel like my best possible effort, but it wasn’t too far off. 30 minutes exercise is a great way to start the day, even if a free ride is a bit more loose and free than a structured Zwift exercise.
Pretty pleased to have averaged 496w during the first sprint. I really gave it as much as I could. The 20 minute average either equaling or being better than my previous is decent as well. All in it says I’m getting fitter, but my technique is still seriously unrefined.
It didn’t feel like a strong ride today by any means. I think back to 4-6 weeks ago and there is likely no way I could have completed this circuit, and if I had, it would likely have been well over 40 minutes. On that front, solid improvement. But gearing, cadence, issues with the bike (indexing gears etc), still so much to learn.
I was really surprised to see such a strong ride by my own standings. To get a guesstimated FTP boost was a shocker. It didn’t feel like I would be in for a boost. In many ways this feels like the jump in the 150s. It was hard to make it to ~150w, then the jumps between 150w to 160w all came quite quickly. The thought of a true FTP test still scares the heck of out of me.
All in all, a good ride, but not a great ride. It certainly changed my appreciation for Richmond. I am looking forward to riding this circuit again at a future date. Unfortunately, Richmond, like Innsbruck, comes up far too infrequently. I believe Innsbruck is on Bank Holiday Monday next week, so that’s quite cool. I may take a rest day between now and then, and then put in a big ride on Innsbruck. We shall see.
I mentioned yesterday about my shoes. They turned out to be really tight, so I’ve had to send them back. Asked for a replacement pair, and to be fair, Sigma Sports offer free returns, so all in, no big problems. Gutted I won’t have them over the weekend, but such is life.