Ahh Zwift’s Jungle area… the only time 99% of Zwifters head down there is when forced. Sadly, today I was forced, and in more ways than one.
This week has been a heat wave here in the UK. Well, 17-18c, that’s a heat wave for this time of the year, and I won’t hear anymore of your cheek on that subject. Anyway, that does mean the desire for me to spend any time indoors on the turbo is practically non existent.
But today was the last possible day to do Stage 4, so I kinda had too.
Craftily, I opted for the Shorter ride – the ‘easiest’ of the three on offer. Essentially all were the same ride, two, three, or five laps of the “Handful of Gravel” route. That’s a new one on me. In short it was part of the new addition to the Jungle area, and also in reverse to the typical approach.
One strange addition today was the changing of the road surface. Apparently we had switched from dirt to gravel. I can’t say I noticed in terms of speed or in game whatever, but I can say on the Tacx Neo real feel road surface it felt … horrible? Like my chain was constantly slipping, would be the best way to describe that. One more reason to steer clear of the Jungle.
Whilst I didn’t like the feel of the road surface, it’s quite interesting that the Zwift devs are no sufficiently capable to make changes like this without destroying the game with a plethora of new bugs. On the innovations front, things definitely seem to be moving in the right direction. Good to see the investor money is being put to use.
Once I’d got the two laps done I was promptly off the turbo and heading outdoors. I’d managed to get through the Zwift portion of my lunch break in 30 minutes, so had 30 left for some outdoor action.
Heading out, still soaking from the turbo, I was freezing. But I quickly dried up and got about pootling. As ever, recovering outdoors is hard – and I did a terrible job of it – but it was nice to get down to Avenum Park and zip about in the sun.
But yeah, overall I’m a bit knackered this week. Half way done, give or take, and I’m very much looking forwards to a rest day now.
