This afternoon’s ride was the Tour for All 2020: Stage 3 Longer Ride.
I don’t know if I was unlucky or what on this one, but I ended up – I think – pretty much riding in some kind of ERG mode throughout. No matter what gear I tried, I couldn’t seem to get much past about 75-80rpm, and the hills and flats all felt exactly the same.
Frustratingly, I’ve actually wanted this exact experience before. And today I got it, with no idea how to replicate it.
At best, I think it somehow happened because I messed up by not plugging in the bluetooth USB dongle before starting Zwift.
Zwift then prompted me to enable bluetooth, by which time I’d already fired up the Garmin and – somehow (as best I recall) – paired the pedals. I think the Garmin controlled the ride resistance somehow, though I’m really not sure.
Anyway, the other problem was my heart rate sensor wouldn’t work either. Not for the first time. My, that thing is intermittent at the moment.
Aside from that, this ride was pretty much one to forget.
My initial mistake was trying to un-pair and re-pair the heart rate sensor about 1km in, at which point Zwift stopped my rider – even though I hadn’t stopped pedalling – and then I got dropped by the masses.
No big deal, you may think, but Zwift’s Tour group rides are basically races in sheep’s clothing. So catching back up with the herd was not something I was ever able to do. Again, this is partly because even when I stepped on it, I couldn’t seem to beat the damn trainer resistance. But also partly ‘cus I simply couldn’t be bothered.
Yesterday’s race absolutely took it out of me. And tomorrow I want to do a bigger outdoor ride – weather permitting. I had naively thought I might do the Stage 3 race this afternoon, but I knew almost immediately after waking up this morning that that was never going to happen. No sir.
As it was, plodding along at roughly 200w for the entire distance – hill or flat – wasn’t so bad. It’s a shame I wasn’t surrounded by more people, but that’s not going to spoil my day. I managed to get in some video tutorial watching whilst riding, and Strava tells me I boshed 777 calories in just over an hour. You know what? I’ll take it.
