This morning I took part in the longer ride of the Tour of Watopia 2020: Stage 2.
This was essentially a re-run of yesterday’s race, though today featuring two laps, instead of one. And ideally, a less intense pace.
I set out today with the goal of taking this one at recovery. Or, thereabouts.
That didn’t really work out.
I managed to maintain a fairly relaxed pacing for the flat part of the first lap, but still found myself climbing at 3.1w/kg on the hilly portion of the lap.
Not that it really did me much good today.
Interestingly on this ride we were joined by a real life cycling professional: Andre Greipel. However, I didn’t actually see him on the circuit at any point. Only briefly in chat.
Frankly even at this early stage of this years Tour of Watopia, I am absolutely knackered.
I’ve only done four rides this week, of which all have been Tour rides / races, but they have absolutely smashed me.
It’s worrying that the next ride is to be the Alpe.
As per yesterday, I struggled again today on the constant up and down rollers of the “Sequoias” portion of this route.
I wasn’t intending to put down any serious efforts in the climbing portion today, so was absolutely amazed to see that my KOM time of my first lap was 2 seconds faster than yesterday’s race effort.
I guess this goes to show how badly I managed my pacing yesterday, given that I’d effectively blown up on the flats and had nothing left for the “hills”.
Anyway, I didn’t feel that bad today after the first climb.
But what I did do after this point was push myself a little harder. Perhaps a little too hard, honestly.
A group swallowed me up, and I decided to stick with them.
Fortunately they weren’t pushing at a race pace by any means, but they were likely going harder than I ought to have been, considering I’d wanted to do this one as a “recovery” ride.
Still, it’s always nicer – imo – to be in a pack.
Coming around to the climb on the second lap, I’d kinda lost track of where abouts I was. Not in terms of the in game map, but more in terms of my pacing.
Whilst for once I didn’t get dropped from the group I was with, again I probably went too hard to stick with them.
I really feel I should have taken this entire ride in the blue or green zones, and avoided the yellow / red entirely. On this front I failed miserably.
My second time round the KOM was a lonely affair.
I don’t remember how, but I ended up alone. Again, I set a pacing of 3.1w/kg, and as above, that was probably silly.
But frankly I just wanted this one over with, and by doing that I would get the bulk of the climbing done for the day.
I managed to level up today, hitting level 28 and unlocking the Polka Dot Socks. Amazing.
I think the previous level went fast due to the double experience for completing each tour ride. Maybe wrong on that front, however.
On the way back down I had to face the final set of rollers yet again, and resolved to push through them as best I could. Really not a fan of this type of riding. And again maybe I should have used this ride as an experiment in a different trainer difficulty.
Whilst the graph above shows me as looking like I was sprinting to the finish, this was not the case.
The small pack I was with towards the end did have some sprinters but I did essentially what I did yesterday: a small ramp up. From 3.1 to 4.1 to whatever I had left. It wasn’t an out of the saddle affair today. Just wanted it done.
What this now means is I get likely two rest days.
I’m looking at Monday off, Tuesday off, and then Wednesday – either morning or afternoon – on the Alpe du Zwift group ride.
That’s likely going to absolutely smash me, and completely destroy my racing potential.
However, the Stage 3 race must be done by midday Saturday (as far as I know) so realistically I’m going to be racing Thursday on dead legs, or Friday when I’d really rather have a rest day.
Even though today’s riding wasn’t stand out, getting over an hour on the bike, hitting 46km, and 800 calories is a solid workout. I’ll take it. They all add up.
And again, it’s easy to forget but not too long ago an hour at 196w would have been a solid result for me.
Looking ahead then at this point, it’s likely that my next ride will be Wednesday either at 8am, if I’m feeling brave. Or it will be Wednesday at 16:30, assuming I can duck out early at work. We’ll have to wait and see.
All I can say at this point is: thank God I’m done for the moment. Phew, what a week.
