This morning I took part in my second leg of Stage 1 of the Tour of Watopia 2020. Fortunately zero technical issues this morning, though perhaps doing a 50km+ ride less than 24 hours after doing a hard race was a bit optimistic.
For an unassuming Thursday morning ride this one was well attended. I saw last night’s longer group ride had bicycle based professional pedal man André Greipel riding alongside the rest of the riders, so that one had hundreds and hundreds of Zwifters online for the experience.
However, for this morning’s ride we got our own celebrity Zwifter in the form of Zwift CEO Eric Min.
Fresh out of the pens I knew this one was going to be a slog. It’s not uncommon for me to start to feel the bite within ~20 minutes of a longer ride. Today, it was more like within the first kilometer. We hadn’t even finished the lead-in before I was wondering how realistic my current pacing would be.
See, here’s the thing: I needed to be done by 09:30, in order to get to work.
Therefore last night I’d done some very awful maths in my head, trying to figure out at what pacing I needed to be at in order to cover 50km in 1.5 hours.
The figure I’d come up with was 10km every 15 minutes, which would give me plenty of time to shower and dress etc once done.
Things went rapidly off plan.
I did manage the first 10km in 15 minutes. And whilst I wasn’t with the very lead group, I was certainly with a set of fast paced front runners.
But very quickly – within 15 minutes essentially – I was completely burned out.
Unfortunately that meant I fell off the back of that group and was in no-man’s land for a good few kilometers as the group behind caught me up.
Thankfully this second group was more realistically paced for my fitness and freshness levels today.
That being said, I was very much still maxing out – of what I had left in the tank, anyway.
I’d almost done a ride on Tuesday, but thank God I didn’t. With this ride, and yesterday’s race, I’m already over 77km on the week. And I can feel it, big time.
As below, I wasn’t too far off with my pacing overall today. 1hr in, with double draft and a good pack around me, we’d covered 40km distance. I think that’s the fastest pace I’ve ever done that distance before on Zwift, though I may be wrong.
Bang on the hour mark Mr. Min called time on his ride and said he had to get to work. The tough life of a CEO. This was at 9am, so I reckoned I still had ~15-20m of riding left.
After the CEO departed, the group around me seemed to pick up the pace. I don’t know if this was in my head, but there were at least two points along the way that I very nearly fell off the back of the group. If I had, that would have been a total disaster. The nearest rider behind was over a minute away, and they appeared isolated.
Fortunately, I did manage to cling on. But really, only just. I have thrashed myself over the last 24 hours, no doubt about it.
Seeing the final ~10km through today took a lot out of me.
I’m definitely having a rest day tomorrow, and then I’ll be looking to get into the Stage 2 race on Saturday afternoon. I’m dubious as to how well I will have recovered even by that point, but the show must go on.
As we came around to the finishing line, I was surprised by how many of the small pack I was with decided to put in a sprint finish. I wasn’t sprinting, but I tried to put in a ramp up of power to see the ride through. To be quite honest the only reason to push harder was to get this one done faster.
Still, pretty happy with 1h 20m for a ~54km ride. And what a solid way to start a Thursday.
Whilst at this point it certainly doesn’t feel this way, I can only imagine that this ride has helped my overall fitness.
Hitting a 199w average over 1h20m would have been unheard of for me a few months ago. On that front, things are definitely progressing in the right direction. It can be easy to overlook that wider picture when focusing on particular rides or races.
From these pictures I’m seeing that I still have my weight set at 69kg.
This may need adjusting as for the last few weigh in’s, I have been between 67 and 68kg. No bloody wonder when doing 1,000 calories before breakfast.
Probably my biggest fail of today was in starting the ride without having finished my cup of coffee. Of course I kept drinking as the ride went on, and I managed to spill a lot of it on the window ledge.
What did I use to wipe up the spillage?
My riding towel, of course!
Ahh yes, let’s rub wet instant coffee slop all over my face for the next hour or so. What a win.
Even though I’m moaning about tiredness, I do really like these Tours on Zwift.
Having the structure, and the regular big group rides and races is really motivating to get on the bike.
I just wish each stage was longer than 4 days. And in the case of this Tour of Watopia, I wish it finished with a climb of the Alpe.
Hard to really get a sense of cadence today. It wasn’t regularly above 90rpm, that’s for sure. Strava, as below, has me down at 83rpm average. You know, I’ll take it with how I feel right now.
And again, Critical Power wasn’t a new high today, and I doubt I’ll be setting many hour records during this tour. But it’s all helping build up base fitness.
That said, I do feel like my fitness falls off a cliff after an hour at the moment.
Ahh well. Always something that can be improved.
